


Trust Issues

by Septdeneuf



Category: One Piece
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-22
Updated: 2015-04-22
Packaged: 2018-03-25 06:32:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 31,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3800431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Septdeneuf/pseuds/Septdeneuf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Straw Hats encounter an abandoned ship where the crew seem to have killed each other. After  the cola engine is sabotaged and Chopper is attacked, it looks like the same thing might happen on the Thousand Sunny. Can they find out what's causing this, or are the Straw Hats destined to destroy each other?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the OPBigBang Event on Tumblr and Livejournal. It's a collaboration project, and I was lucky enough to work with the lovely and talented chuchulpacifique. Check out the artwork she did for this story. 
> 
> Thanks also to necral for beta reading this!

_Still no wind…_

Aside from the ripples off their bow, caused by their steady progress through the sea there were no waves in the sea, no evidence of any movement in the air. Franky had assured Nami that they'd have no problem making it to the next island even if it was unusually far away, because at their current speed their cola reserves would be more than sufficient.

And she trusted his judgment, of course. He'd invented that engine, he knew how much it needed, but she'd really rather be able to catch some winds in their sails again. Using up the Cola just for regular traveling didn't sit well with her at all. If for some unforeseen reason they needed to do a coup de burst before they had a chance to refuel, they could get in trouble. Nami really liked keeping that option open, because it had saved their skin on more than one occasion.

The sea had been completely calm for the last two days, and Nami knew she wasn't the only one that was nervous about that. She'd seen Sanji-kun check the status of their supplies twice, and who knew how often he had done so while she hadn't been watching.

She could understand his reasoning. If it weren't for the cola engine they'd be stranded on the calm sea, and with no indication as to when the wind might pick up again, there was no predicting how long they'd be stuck.

If she weren't so completely certain of her navigational skills she might've assumed they were in the calm belt from how little movement there was in the air. She knew that that was impossible, because they were almost exactly in the middle of the Grand Line, as far as one could be from the calm belt in the new world, really, but she'd caught herself checking for seakings on more than one occasion.

"Guys! Guys! There's a ship!", an enthusiastic yell came from the figurehead. Nami looked up and saw her captain pointing into the direction straight ahead. She followed his gaze and found a small dot on the horizon. He was probably right, it might be a ship.

"I guess we should alter course to avoid hitting them, then", Nami said. Really, she wanted to avoid meeting that other ship at all. In the New World there was barely a new encounter that turned out to be a positive experience.

"No, we should meet them, see what's up. Maybe there's an adventure!"

"Or it just ends up a a fight", Nami said, crossing her arms to show her disapproval.

"Right, or that." Luffy grinned at her. Nami stared back unimpressed.

"A fight would be a bad thing, we should avoid the fight", Nami explained. Luffy just kept grinning at her. As if he hadn't heard her protest, but she knew he had. But apparently a fight being a bad thing didn't quite arrive in his vacuous head.

"Fine, you're the captain. Let's meet them and see what's up. But if we get closer and see that they're Marines we're getting the hell out of there," Nami stated.

"Okay", Luffy said with a shrug. "Wohoo! A new adventure!"

Nami shook her head, but didn't alter their course for the moment. It didn't really look like a marine ship, at least, and she knew Luffy was very starved for some action ever since they'd entered the wind still area. He wasn't great with inactivity, and to top it off, Sanji-kun was rationing their meat supply.

"There appears to be a ship?", Brook inquired from behind her. Nami turned around, seeing him come up the steps to the front of the boat.

"Yeah, Luffy thinks it'll be an adventure to meet it," Nami said with a sigh. "So I guess we'll see soon enough what they're about."

"Ah. Well it seems our dear captain is a bit starved for entertainment", Brook mused.

"Yeah, let's just hope that the ship turns out to be utterly boring", Nami agreed.

 

As they got closer to the other ship it became clear that it wasn't moving at all. Seemed like they didn't have any ingenious cola engine to propel them forward. Nami wasn't too happy about that, because it could mean potential conflict if the other crew got wind of their technology and tried to steal it. Well, not if there was literally wind, then they'd have no problem…

It wasn't a marine ship, but Nami wasn't completely sure what kind of ship it _was_ even as they got closer. More of the crew had gathered to look at the other ship, because they'd all been a bit bored, but even with his goggles Usopp hadn't been able to make out a flag. Looked like the ship wasn't flying one, and its sagging sails were white and nondescript.

Even more oddly, though, there were no signs of activity from the ship. There was no one walking around on deck as far as they could observe.

"Hm, looks like there's no one there, maybe we should just…" Usopp suggested, but he didn't even have the chance to finish his sentence before…

"OI! HELLOOOOO! Is someone there?!" Luffy's cry was loud enough to echo over the the entire Grand Line. Usopp flinched, Zoro rolled his eyes… pardon, eye, and Sanji-kun sighed. Nami couldn't judge the rest of the crew's reactions because she was too busy facepalming.

"I turned the cola engine off, and we can lower the anchors if anyone wants to go explore?", Franky suggested, climbing up from the lower deck.

"Franky! Why would you suggest that? We don't want to go exploring on that ship, what if there's scary ghosts?", Usopp wailed.

"Ghosts? Oh no, really?", Chopper repeated, looking spooked and running over to cling to the nearest convenient leg, which happened to be Robin's. Apparently neither the sniper nor the doctor seemed to find the fact that it was daytime any less scary.

"Maybe there's a debilitating disease on the ship", Robin mused. "It might kill us all just because we've gotten too close."

"What you mean like the plague? Or cholera? Or typhus? Oh no, we need a doctor!", Chopper screamed.

"Chopper-san, you're the doctor", Brook reminded him.

"Oh right… oh, actually, I can heal all of those with antibiotics, it's fine", Chopper said, much more calmly now. He didn't stop clinging to Robin's leg, though.

"Maybe there's another Brook on there! How cool would that be? Ghost ships are awesome, we totally need to check this out!" Luffy's eyes were sparkling, and Nami knew there was nothing that anyone could say that would convince him not to go on that boat.

"Here", Zoro announced in a bored tone and held out his fist, containing a bunch of straws. Apparently he'd come to the conclusion that discussion was pointless earlier than she had. Not that it was surprising, but she'd still maintained the hope.

"Do you just keep those on you all the time?", Usopp asked, and timidly approached the proffered hand, almost as if he was scared of the straws themselves.

"Just pick one", Zoro instructed. Slowly, the sniper reached out a shaking hand, closing his eyes and making a mumbled prayer before he finally took one of the straws. Meanwhile, Sanji-kun and Franky had already picked theirs. A hand of Robin's appeared on the swordsman's shoulder and plucked a straw from the bunch, while Brook reached out delicately to pick one.

"I don't need one, right? I really wanna go!", Luffy said. Which was surprising. Nami wasn't sure he'd ever even noticed them doing this before, because he was usually too excited about the place he would visit to care about this.

"No, Luffy, it's about who's gonna come with you. You can go", Nami said. At the same time she picked her straw, and Zoro held his fist down so Chopper could reach it and pick one of the last two straws that were there.

"Yes!", Usopp shouted. "Thank you, goddesses of fate, I am forever your humble servant, thank you so much for sparing me from this agony, I will never forget your kindness! Franky, want to help me build a shrine?"

"I don't know, bro, I kinda wanted to go, but I didn't get a red one…"

While they were discussing that, Nami chanced a look at the straw in her hand and found its end as pristinely white as its tip. She breathed a sigh of relief. Not that she'd been nervous or anything…

"Oh…" she heard Brook say next to her in a quiet voice. He held up his straw, red end clearly showing. He looked up from it, to the ship they were supposed to visit, and back to the tiny straw in his hands, his shoulders sagging.

"You'll protect me if there's something scary, right, Robin?", Chopper asked as he hopped over to where Luffy was waiting for his travel companions.

"Of course, doctor-san. And you will protect me from anything pathological, I hope?"

"You bet! I'll cure whatever disease there might be, don't you worry!"

Over the sound of Robin's giggle, Nami looked back to their musician. She really had no idea how he was doing it, but the trepidation and fear was clearly visible about him. Maybe not on his face, but in the way he held himself, and stayed rooted to the spot even though the others that had been chosen were already practically on their way to the other ship.

" _Ghost ship after ghost ship, it's terrifying!"_ Unbidden, the memory of their first encounter with Brook popped into Nami's head. A skeleton being scared of ghost ships had seemed ridiculous at the time, but she knew by now that the fear was entirely genuine, and after 50 years drifting on a dark and foggy sea probably had more than a little bit of post traumatic stress mixed in.

Brook wrung his hands, and seemed to be steeling himself to go over to the other ship when Nami deftly plucked the straw from his hand and replaced it with the one she'd drawn herself.

"Nami-san, you…" Brook whispered, his eye sockets looking wider than usual. "You really don't have to do this, I'll be…"

"I'm gonna charge you for it, later", Nami whispered back, so as not to attract too much attention to having done something nice. "Anyway, I got a ghost ship to go to."

"Really, I can…" Brook started to protest, but then apparently thought better of it. "Thank you, Nami-san. I am forever in your debt."

"Everyone on this boat is", Nami said and then went over to where the other three were waiting, holding up her red straw. "Okay, I'm here, now how do we want to do this? Maybe Robin can make a ladder with her hands or…"

Before she had a chance to make any more perfectly reasonable and sensible suggestions a rubbery arm snaked around her, and Nami only had a short moment of sinking feeling in her stomach to regret her choice before she was flung violently into the air.

"This is faster!", Luffy said somewhere next to her, or maybe the wind was just mocking her, with all the noise it was making, Nami wasn't too sure.

They landed unceremoniously on the deck of the other ship. Well Nami did, at least. Luffy bounced off the deck as he always did, and Robin emerged elegantly standing on her feet as if being flung through the air at rapid speeds was nothing to be concerned about at all. Nami felt a moment of resentment. She had to make the other woman teach her how to do that, one of these days. Though she doubted it was really something that could be taught.

Nami checked if she still had as many limbs as she had had at the start of the journey, and when she was satisfied with the results, she pushed herself up.

Or she would've, anyway, if the ground under her left hand had been wood. Instead, it was a strange waxy mass, covered by some fabric. She turned to look at what it was…

"Kyaaah!", she yelled, falling back on her hands and doing her best to shuffle away from the body on all fours. The unseeing eyes of the dead man stayed fixed without tracking her movement.

"There's a… a…", she stammered when she finally managed to get back on her feet. "Over there! I landed on it!"

"There's another corpse over here", Robin commented calmly, and Nami had no idea how she was being calm about this. Dammit, she really shouldn't have switched with Brook. He was a dead man himself, he should be able to handle this.

"Looks they've only been dead for a few days", Chopper said, bending down to the body next to Robin's feet and looking at it a bit more closely. He took the dead man's arm and moved it. "Rigor mortis isn't there anymore, but the body isn't really decayed yet."

"Chopper! I thought you'd be on my side, why aren't you freaked out?", Nami complained. She was torn between walking over to where Robin and Chopper were standing, or staying where she was, because while she wanted to put some distance between her and the corpse she'd landed on, she didn't want to get closer to the corpse that Robin and Chopper were studying carefully as if that was a completely non horrifying thing to do.

"Oh, I've seen dead bodies before, as a doctor you have to know how to diagnose cause of death and everything. Plus doctorine used to get bodies for me to dissect when I was studying, to practice anatomy and operations and so on", Chopper said cheerfully.

Nami forcefully swallowed to stop her bile from rising up. Sometimes it was just too easy to forget that Chopper had been raised and trained by a pretty damn scary woman.

"So, do you know what killed them?", Luffy asked. Nami looked over to where their captain was standing. There was another body close to where he was, and Nami had to stop herself from screaming again. Luffy didn't seem like this was bothering him too much, but he didn't look as cheerful and happy as he usually did, either.

"Uh, I'd have to examine them more closely", Chopper said. "But I think we should look for survivors first!"

"Okay, go do that", Luffy said.

"I do wonder what happened to them", Robin said. "The ship seems to be undamaged, it doesn't look like they were fired upon or attacked at all."

"Except for all the dead people", Nami said. "Maybe their attackers just boarded their ship without any forewarning?"

"Possibly", Robin said. "I'd like to help examine the bodies. I have some experience with determining cause of death, myself."

"Because you worked as an assassin?", Nami couldn't stop herself from asking.

"Because I am an archaeologist", Robin replied. "Though the people I work with are usually a lot less… fresh."

"Oh, right, sorry", Nami said. Even if Robin's assassin past was the first thing that popped into her head it wasn't cool to comment on it.

"Let's go below deck and see if we find anyone", Chopper said. The others nodded their agreement, and Chopper went to the first door he found. He took the doorknob and tried to turn it, but it didn't move. "It's locked!"

"Let me", Nami said, and kneeled down in front of the door. This, at least, was something she could deal with. Dead bodies, no. Locked door, any time.

Unfortunately when the door swung open and she returned her lockpick to her pocket, she saw that it revealed even more bodies.

"Hello? Is anyone alive in here?", Luffy yelled. They all waited for a moment. No response.

The room seemed to be an office or something of the sort. There was a desk, with a large man hanging over it, and a second man was slumped at the wall, his throat obviously slit.

"This may be the captain of the ship", Robin theorized, stepping closer to the desk and examining the man's hat more closely.

"Do you think they were pirates?", Luffy asked.

"It's possible. Either that or a trade ship, since they're obviously not Marines", Robin mused. "I'd lean further towards trade ship, though. The furniture looks to be quite expensive, and it looks like there are detailed records here."

She pulled a book out of the shelf behind the desk and flipped through it. "Yes, these are records of transactions, and of routes the ship must've taken. I've never seen any pirates document their actions this neatly."

Luffy just nodded. Nami had the feeling that he wasn't really feeling the spirit of this adventure anymore. She herself sure didn't. But then she hadn't been all that into the adventure in the first place.

"But this looks like they got attacked, right? It's not some disease, or anything?", Nami asked, remembering Robin's earlier joke. Well hopefully it had been a joke.

"Well whatever happened, they did die of trauma", Chopper said. He'd transformed into heavy point and pushed the man at the desk back in his chair to look at his front. Which was covered in dried blood.

Nami really didn't like this boat.

But… if they were a trade ship…

"They might have treasure!", she suddenly blurted out. "Well, unless it got stolen by whoever did this to them, anyway…"

"Oh, right. Let's go look for it, Nami", Luffy said, perking up at the suggestion of doing something other than looking at the dead bodies. Or at least that's how Nami interpreted it, since that was how she was feeling.

Or at least that's what she'd been hoping for. The ship was full of individual cabins and Nami had to pick the locks on all of them, and behind most doors there were more bodies. After the third one she decided to just make Luffy peek in first before she took a look herself, because she really didn't want to lose her lunch. It had been one of her favorites, after all.

"Anyone alive?", Luffy kept shouting at random intervals, but to no success apparently. Robin and Chopper sometimes joined them for opening doors, but mostly just stayed behind looking at the bodies.

The ship was quite a sight larger than the Thousand Sunny, not quite at marine warship level, but not that much smaller either. And the size of its dead crew reflected that.

When they'd gotten further to the belly of the ship, they finally came upon a door with a much more heavy duty lock than the rest of them, and that immediately made Nami's cat burglar senses flare up. If there was treasure on the boat, beyond the individual possessions of its crew members at least, then it was almost certainly behind this door.

"This one's going to take a while", she announced, and Luffy seemed to sense her anticipation, looking intently at the lock as she worked. She told herself not to get her hopes up, because it was probably all stolen, but the thrill of treasure was one that she would never get tired of.

The lock wasn't of the newest design, though, and while it did take patience, it didn't even test the limit of Nami's skill. She pushed the bolts up and tested the positions several times, before she dared turning the lock.

Click.

Success!

"I got it", Nami announced, a smug edge to her tone. Not to praise herself, okay, totally to praise herself, but this was pretty damn impressive.

"Whoo, awesome!", Luffy cheered, agreeing with Nami's inner assessment. He pulled on the door eagerly, and stepped in. Nami followed him, closing her eyes briefly, hoping that they wouldn't just find more bodies. She'd seen enough bodies for one day, really.

"Whoa! We can totally build a bronze statue of me with all of that!", Luffy said eagerly and Nami opened her eyes. And blinked a few times.

Well, if anyone had attacked this ship in order to steal their riches, they were really fucking lousy at their job. The room was as large as the galley of the Sunny and filled to the brim with riches. Belli coins, gold and silver jewellery, precious gems, the whole shebang.

Once they had that on the Sunny she'd need to go shopping to make sure they got rid of the excess weight of gold quickly. Oooh the luxuries she'd be able to afford…

Think of all the cute clothes you can buy… concentrate on that, she told herself when the feeling of unease wouldn't let up.

"Oh, you found the treasure? Whoa that's so much! Nami, can we get the ultrasound device I wanted, now? You said it's too expensive, but we can totally afford it with this!", Chopper said, having just come in.

"Ask me again when we're back on the Sunny", Nami said distractedly. Why had no one stolen this treasure? Even if that wasn't your primary goal, leaving it here was insane, when there wasn't even anyone left on the ship to do anything with it.

There was a rustling noise, and Nami looked up immediately. So did the others.

"Uh… do you think they have a guardian spirit that wants to kill us now for finding their treasure? But we didn't even take anything yet, I'm sorry, evil spirit!", Chopper wailed, his eyes flitting around the room trying to find where the noise came from.

"I don't believe so, doctor-san. Rats might be a more reasonable explanation", Robin said. "Plus, if it were a vengeful spirit I'm sure we'd all be well on our way to a horrible and painful end."

"Oh. That's good then", Chopper said with a sigh of relief. "Wait, is that good?"

"Did you see any rats, before?", Nami asked. She hadn't seen a single one so far, and with all the dead bodies surely they would've been around, wouldn't they?

Luffy meanwhile seemed uninterested in their conversation. Instead he'd waded into the pile of treasure and seemed to be looking for something.

"Luffy, what are you doing?", Nami asked.

"Psssht", Luffy said, putting a finger in front of his mouth and Nami could do nothing but blink at being shushed by Luffy of all people. Like the loudest person in the entire crew had any right to talk…

"What is it, captain-san?", Robin inquired, more quietly than Nami had. He didn't answer, but stood still where he was in midst of the treasure. For a moment there was no noise in the room but their collective breathing.

Until…

"Aha!", Luffy declared at the second rustling noise and went in the direction where it had come from, near the far corner of the room where the treasure pile was getting smaller again.

"It's not a rat, is it?", Chopper asked. A quick glance behind her revealed that he was now hiding the wrong way behind Robin's legs.

Luffy didn't reply, but a moment later the answer became obvious when he pulled someone out of the pile of treasure by their clothes.

"Ah… ah… please… no… no more…", the man babbled. He looked terrible, almost as dead as the rest of the people on the ship, haggard looking features and an unhealthy greyish tinge to his skin. He didn't seem to have washed in quite a while, either, his hair hanging greasily into his face, and his pants looked like… Nami didn't really want to finish that thought.

Plus there were what looked like flecks of dried blood on his clothing.

"Hi there!", Luffy said cheerfully. "Do you know what happened on this ship? And why didn't you answer when I asked if there's someone still alive? You could've saved us a lot of time."

The man seemed to shrink physically away from Luffy's questions, even though he wasn't really standing on his own feet, Luffy's grip on his clothes the only thing keeping him sort of upright.

"The… you… but… no, no more, please no more", the man said, and he sounded out of breath even if he hadn't really been doing anything.

"Are you a member of this crew?", Robin asked. "Can you tell us which ship this is, and why it's here?"

The man looked up at Robin briefly, but then looked down again quickly, shaking his head. "I… why… no… here… no…"

"Are you hurt?", Chopper asked, climbing over the pile of treasure and getting closer to the man to examine him. Luffy set him down on the nearest box so Chopper could take a look at him more easily.

The man didn't answer, only shied away when Chopper tried to put his hooves on him. "It's okay, I'm a doctor", Chopper reassured in a calm voice. "No one's going to hurt you, I'm just checking if you're injured."

Nami wasn't so sure from the way the man looked at the little reindeer that he'd really understood what he'd said, but when Chopper approached him again, he didn't flinch away at least. Chopper pushed his shirt open and looked at it.

"He's hurt. It looks pretty bad, I think it's infected", Chopper said, picking at some scab on the man's stomach. Nami looked away when something oozed from the wound.

"We should get him back to the Sunny so I can examine him in the infirmary", Chopper said. "I can't really do that much here, and I don't think it's all that sanitary to work on this ship."

"Are you sure that's a good idea?", Nami asked. "He might be the one who did this to all the others."

"That seems like a possibility", Robin said. "It explains why no items were removed if the culprit is still on board the ship."

The man didn't comment, didn't really seem to be understanding anything they were saying, but he looked at each of them with a terrified expression when they were speaking.

"He doesn't really look like he could do that to all these people", Chopper said. "I mean he's obviously scared, do you really think a mass murderer would act that way?"

"I think there are many ways someone could act after discovering they were the cause of such destruction. He may not have been completely himself when he did it", Robin said. "I don't think the fact that he is scared now is much indication of whether or not he's responsible for this."

"I don't think we should take him onto the Sunny", Nami added. "If he's really the one who did this, then he's dangerous and I for one don't think I could sleep well with him on board."

"He's way too sick to do anything, anyway", Chopper said, continuing his examination. "He's running a fever, and I think he's hurt pretty bad. As long as he's like this he can't tell us what happened here, either. I can't in good conscience leave him here. I'm a doctor, my job is to help people, and not just when it's convenient for me, all the time!"

"I believe the decision is up to the captain, then", Robin said, looking over at Luffy. The rubber man was looking at the survivor thoughtfully, tilting his head to the side.

"You can take him back to the ship", he said after a moment.

"Are you sure about that?", Nami asked, unhappy with the decision.

"We can guard him", Luffy said. "I'm not going to let him hurt anyone back on the ship, but Chopper's right, he's a doctor, and if he wants to help people, he should."

"Fine", Nami said with a dramatic sigh.


	2. Chapter 2

Sanji had just finished cleaning up from breakfast and was enjoying a mid morning cigarette on deck when Franky discovered their problem. They'd stayed anchored next to the corpse ship for the rest of the previous day, transporting over the treasure that Nami-san had found while Chopper took care of the survivor.

They hadn't really decided what to do with all the bodies, there. They didn't really know anything about who they were even dealing with, but just leaving them adrift seemed wrong somehow. Sanji had suggested just setting the ship on fire, but the fact that they had no idea who they were had undermined that suggestion.

Brook had pointed out that someone else might be interested in finding that ship. If they'd been part of a trade organization or something then there were probably people wondering what had happened to the vessel and maybe those people would still want to find them.

Not that a ship full of decaying bodies was such a nice find, but then, Sanji hadn't really felt like arguing.

He'd gone over there several times when they'd carried the treasure off the ship and seen the bodies lying around. It was an eerie atmosphere, and coming back to the Sunny felt like breathing fresh air, and not just because of the smell.

Looking back at the galley door and imagining the infirmary behind it, the cook wondered if the man Chopper was treating in there was really responsible for what had happened on the other ship. He didn't give off a violent vibe to Sanji, more traumatized than anything. But then, there wasn't really any other explanation for everyone on that other ship being dead, either, so maybe there was something to it, after all.

At that moment, Franky burst onto deck out of the hatch, looking livid.

"Where's that bastard? I thought we were guarding him, what happened to that, huh?", the huge cyborg said, waving a spanner the size of Chopper around.

"Franky? What's going on?", Usopp asked, and Sanji decided to get closer to see what the problem was. He went down the stairs onto the grass deck.

"The engine is broken!", Franky roared. "It was perfectly fine yesterday evening, and now it's completely busted. It has to be that guy from the other ship, why wasn't there anyone guarding him?"

"Completely busted?", Nami-san repeated, looking concerned. And radiant, of course, but concerned seemed to be more important at the moment.

"Yeah, I don't even know how someone could've broken it like that. It's completely messed up, I've never seen sabotage that bad", Franky growled. He swung the large spanner in his hand and looked at the galley door, behind which the infirmary lay.

"But you can fix it, right?", Nami-swan asked, and there was an edge in her tone that resonated with an uneasy feeling in Sanji's gut.

"I hope so", Franky said. Which wasn't nearly as reassuring as Sanji had been hoping for. "I'm gonna need some time to really assess the damage."

"So, how soon do you think we'll get moving again?", Nami-san asked.

"Depends, what's the wind doing?", Franky asked back.

"Nothing, right now. We need that engine", Nami insisted. She crossed her arms and looked at Franky intently.

"Then it'll be a few days at least, before we can get underway", the cyborg said.

"A few days, huh?", Sanji said, taking a puff of his cigarette, trying to calm himself down. Mentally he was going over all their stocks. They still had food, but he'd been worried about their supplies ever since they'd ended up in this wind still area, because being stranded here could mean a long time between new supplies, and fishing hadn't been all that successful around here, either.

And now they were stranded. Of course, if it really only took a few days it wouldn't be too bad. They had been well stocked at the last island, and he'd already taken measures to ration their food usage. Still, the thought didn't sit well with him. What if Franky couldn't fix it?

"I can help", Usopp offered. He'd put his fishing rod down and came over to where they were discussing the engine problems. "I mean, four hands are better than two, right? Or I guess that'd be six, then, since you kinda have four…"

"Much appreciated, nose-bro", Franky said.

"Still, how could this have happened?" Nami-san asked. "You guys were guarding the survivor the entire time, weren't you? How could he have gotten out?"

"Maybe someone fell asleep?", Usopp theorized. Sanji couldn't help but raising his gaze to the crow's nest where the swordsman was training. If anyone had a history of falling asleep on watch, then it was the algae colony.

"Well I'm gonna have words with that guy. Nobody messes with my baby and gets away with it", Franky said darkly, and stalked off to the infirmary. Sanji decided to follow him, and so did Nami-san and Usopp.

Franky threw the infirmary door open with such vigor that it made every bottle on Chopper's shelves rattle. The little reindeer squeaked, and jumped up from his chair.

"You!", Franky said, pointing at the survivor from the other ship with the massive spanner he was still carrying. "What did you do to my engine?"

"Franky, what are you doing? This is a place for sick people, not for making lots of noise!", Chopper protested.

"The cola engine is busted, and this guy did it!", Franky yelled.

The man in question woke with a start at the loud noise and gave a squeak before, pulling his hands up. Or trying to, at least. He didn't get far before the restraints tying him to the bed stopped his movement.

"No he didn't!", Chopper said. "He's been tied to the bed the entire night, he couldn't have done it!"

"But… he must've!", Franky said. "There's no one else from that ship…" The cyborg seemed to lose his momentum at the new information.

"He couldn't have", Chopper insisted.

"Is there any way he could've gotten out of the restraints at night?", Usopp asked.

"Not really, there's no way for him to reach the clasps when his tied up, and if he had, he would've had to put them back on himself afterwards, and that really doesn't work", Chopper said. "Plus we took turns watching him the entire night, he never could have pulled this off without anyone noticing."

An awkward silence descended on the room.

"So… if it wasn't him, then how did the engine get busted?", Usopp asked as the silence got more uncomfortable.

"Looks like we missed someone else still alive on that ship", Sanji said darkly.

 

The cook had helped with looking around the other ship for a few hours, but so far they hadn't turned up anything useful. Whoever or whatever was still on there was very good at hiding itself, and it didn't sit well with Sanji. If it already managed to sabotage their engine, who knew what other damage it might cause?

But he'd had to go back to his duties as a cook first. He was in the kitchen, setting the table while the noodles were getting ready. He'd checked over their supplies again, just to check that they hadn't been tempered with, and luckily there was no sign of anyone other than himself having been in there during the last day.

"Hey, wait, get back here!"

Sanji looked up at the yell coming from the infirmary, and a moment later the door was thrown open and the survivor from the other ship dashed through it, followed by Chopper. Before Sanji had a chance to react, the man jumped over the counter and grabbed one of the large chef knives.

"Stop, I don't mean to hurt you, I was just going to change your bandages to manage the infection, you don't need to be scared", Chopper said, jumping onto the counter himself, but then freezing in place when he saw the knife in the man's hands.

"Uh… I'm sure we can talk about this…", Chopper said uncertainly, edging away from the man.

Sanji really didn't like the look on the survivor's face. There was something desperate and crazy to it, reminiscent of a cornered animal, or maybe of a starved little boy getting ready to try and kill a fully grown pirate.

The cook took his cigarette carton out of his breast pocket, shook one free, put it between his lips and lit it, as nonchalantly as possible while keeping eye contact with the survivor. The man looked confused and scared at what Sanji was doing, but the cook was moving slowly and deliberately. No sudden movement was the key.

He took a drag from his cigarette, before finally addressing the survivor.

"Now, what do you plan on doing with that thing?", Sanji asked. "It's not a weapon, you know, it's for food. I'd very much appreciate you not damaging it."

The man looked uncertainly at the cook, and his grip on the knife's handle tightened.

"Can you understand what I'm saying?", Sanji asked slowly, making sure to articulate clearly and keep his tone level.

The man looked at him intensely for a moment, but then gave a faint nod.

"Oh, he never replied to anything I…", Chopper said, but at the noise the man jumped and pointed the knife at the little doctor.

"Chopper, be quiet, please", Sanji said. "Let me handle this." The reindeer nodded and slowly backed away from the man with the knife.

"Now, I know you've met our doctor here", Sanji said slowly. "He's been trying to help you. You got hurt, and you got sick, and he's been doing his best to make you better again. Pointing a knife at him for his troubles really isn't polite, you know."

The knife trembled a bit, but the man pulled it back slightly, aiming it somewhere between Chopper and Sanji as if he couldn't really make up his mind about what he was going to do.

"Now, we're not a threat to you", Sanji said. "No one here is going to hurt you, as long as you don't hurt anyone here, you understand?"

The man blinked a few times, his face scrunching up slightly. "It's… it's not you" he said quietly. The first coherent sentence Sanji had heard from him, and from the way Chopper perked up it was the same with him. Luckily the doctor heeded his advice to stay quiet this time.

"Then what is it? What are you afraid of?", Sanji asked. He chanced taking a step closer to the man, slowly but steadily. "If you tell us, maybe we can help you. We saw what happened on your ship, but we don't know who did it, or why. If you tell us what happened, we'll make sure that it doesn't happen anywhere else again."

The man looked at Sanji, before letting out a short, mirthless laugh. "You can't help. It's already too late, for us, for you, for everyone. It's coming to you, too, and you can't stop it."

"Stop what? What's coming for us, what are you talking about?"

"It will take you. Your friends, your fears, everything", the man looked from Chopper to Sanji. "I'm sorry."

"Sorry for what? Did you damage our engine, is that what you're sorry for?", Sanji asked. He was almost within legs' reach now. If he could manage to get the man to give up the knife he was sure this conversation would be a lot more fruitful.

"Sorry for bringing it to you. Sorry for… what's going to happen. I didn't mean to, it was just bad luck, I can see you're good people. I don't want to see any more good people die", the man said.

"That's good, neither do we", Sanji said. "Tell us everything you know about what happened on your ship so we can stop anyone else from getting…"

He was going to say "hurt". But then the man raised the knife. For a moment Sanji thought he was going to attack them, and readied himself to kick the utensil away from the crazy guy, but the knife wasn't pointing at them.

Before Sanji had any chance to process what was actually happening, the guy had raised the knife on himself and slit his own throat.

A spray of blood hit Sanji's face. Chopper was screaming something, but the cook couldn't really hear him, could only stare at the man crumbling to the floor in front of his sink, blood still pumping out of the gaping slash at his neck.

Sanji's cigarette fell out of his mouth, and when he looked down at it he saw the white paper covered in red stains.

"Paper towels! Or something, I need to stop the bleeding!" Sanji finally heard what Chopper was saying, and he reached out numbly for the dishtowel hanging at the counter and handed it to the reindeer.

Chopper didn't even spare a glance to what he was handed, and pressed the material to the wound, but looking at the man's still open, but unfocused eyes, Sanji had a feeling it wouldn't matter anyway.

The door flew open behind them, and other crew members came in, probably because of the commotion, but Sanji's stare was still fixed on the man, trying to make sense of what he'd just done, so he couldn't tell who was coming in.

His gaze fell on the knife that was still loosely gripped in the man's right hand. He kept that knife in excellent condition, just like all of his knives, it had cut through that artery like butter. He knew his knives were sharp, of course, that was the entire point of taking care of them, and they needed to be sharp for his work, but seeing how easily they could end a life was at the same time morbidly fascinating and utterly horrifying.

The blood was still flowing from between Chopper's hooves, and the knife was covered in it, too.

Sanji felt sick.

He'd never be able to use that knife again.

 

Robin had taken it upon herself to move lunch outside. Because of the fact that the man had been facing cook-san when he'd slit his throat, there was no blood in any of the food, as far as she'd been able to tell, but Sanji was evidently much too shaken up to take care of lunch for the moment.

They'd put up a table on the grass deck, which they sometimes did on beautiful days to enjoy the weather. The weather here was still one of an unbroken cloud cover, and not very warm, but the galley was filled with the metallic tang of blood.

Lunch was a subdued affair. Chopper mostly just pushed his food across his plate, while Cook-san seemed to be eating only because he was so used to it, without paying any real attention to what he was doing. Robin supposed that was only natural. Seeing someone kill themselves had to be an unnerving sight.

She'd tried to ask them about why the survivor had done that, but neither of them had been all that susceptible to questions yet. It had taken almost half an hour to get Chopper to stop applying pressure to the wound even though the man was clearly already dead, and Sanji had only been moving in slow motion for a while.

"But that's it, at least, right?", Usopp asked after the meal was over. "No more crazy occurrences because of that ship, right? I mean, he was obviously unstable, and he probably was the one who damaged the engine after all, right? I mean we didn't find anyone else on that ship. So… As soon as Franky and I get the engine fixed, we'll be on our way and forget about this whole thing, right?"

"Right. The sooner we put this whole creepy business behind us, the better", Nami-chan agreed. Neither of them sounded completely convinced of what they were saying, in Robin's opinion. Of course she may have been projecting that feeling.

Because she was not convinced at all.


	3. Chapter 3

"Chopper, do you have any more of that alcohol stuff for disinfecting? Not the iodine stuff, that stains the wood", Usopp called through the infirmary door. Franky had needed some time to figure out how to fix the engine and he hadn't found Usopp's suggestions all that helpful, so Usopp had decided to leave him alone with the engine for the moment so that he could figure out what he needed help with before the sniper got in his way. Not that Usopp wasn't brilliant enough to never get in the way, but the Cyborg's nerves were a bit fried at the moment.

So Usopp had decided to help clean up the kitchen, instead. Sanji's nerves were just as frayed and he'd looked like he needed some help. And seeing the blood stains all over the floor and the counter and Sanji himself Usopp had no trouble understanding why.

So Usopp had been doing most of the cleaning. He tried convincing himself that it was just red paint and told a story of how he'd once been known as the best paint remover in all of East Blue, while Sanji sat in the corner of the kitchen smoking and not really listening, but not telling the Sniper to shut up either.

Actually, the fact that Sanji was so distraught by this was a bit reassuring for Usopp. Sometimes it was hard to remember that the monster trio were normal people just like the rest of the crew and could have all the same emotions and reactions. They were usually able to deal with stressful situations so much better than him that it was a welcome chance to see that they could be fazed by something, too.

Chopper had given Usopp some disinfectant stuff that was really good at removing the blood, but it wasn't quite enough.

"Chopper, are you in there?", Usopp asked as he approached the door, because the reindeer still hadn't answered him. He'd retreated to the infirmary with the body of the man wrapped in a blanket a while ago. Usopp didn't really know why, but apparently there were some doctor things to do with dead people that the sniper didn't really want to know too much about.

"I'm coming in", Usopp said, as he pushed down the doorknob. Maybe the reindeer had already left the infirmary.

The sniper pushed the door open, and looked around, not immediately seeing the doctor there. He'd have to go look for him, because he wasn't so sure that he'd be able to get the right stuff from the infirmary without help. The disinfectant had had a strange name that he'd forgotten pretty much immediately, and he didn't want to risk pouring some more vital and expensive substance on the floor boards.

As he turned to leave the room something caught his eye. Something sticking out on the floor from underneath the cot where the body was lying wrapped in a white sheet.

Something brown…

It only took Usopp a moment to fall down to his knees beside it, when he realized that it was Chopper's knee.

"Chopper? Chopper, hey, can you hear me?", Usopp asked, and tried to tell himself that it wasn't panic he was hearing in his own voice, because Chopper had just fallen asleep or something and there wasn't really any reason to be panicked. Right…?

"Chopper, come on, wake up!", Usopp called again. He pulled the little reindeer out from under the cot, putting a hand on his shoulder and shaking him, but then he saw a large wound on his forehead, blood slowly seeping from it.

"Oi, Chopper!"

There was no reaction from the doctor.

"Chopper, come on, wake up, what happened?" Usopp leaned down to watch the doctor's chest and put his cheek next to the reindeer's open mouth to check his breathing, just like Chopper himself had taught him to do if he found someone unconscious. After only a moment he could feel a small stream of air on his cheek, and then he saw the reindeer's chest rising, too.

So at least he was breathing, and according to Chopper that meant the heartbeat was okay, too, so at least he was alive.

"Chopper! Hey, come on, please wake up!" Usopp pleaded. Because while he could tell that the reindeer wasn't dead, that was pretty much the extent of his medical knowledge in a situation like that. Chopper's instruction had been "and then go get me". But that wasn't too helpful, now…

How had he even managed to hit his head this way? Had he fallen agains the edge of the cot or something? But looking around Usopp couldn't see any blood or any signs that any of the furniture's edges had been hit by a reindeer's head.

So then what…?

 

The crew were sitting around the galley table, this time. Luffy looked angry, but without a concrete goal for his ire he also looked helpless. Robin could understand that feeling. When Usopp had called for help with Doctor-san, he'd apparently been hoping that Nami and herself would be able to do more to help, but neither of them had the appropriate medical knowledge.

The only one who knew how to help Chopper in this situation was unconscious and nothing they had tried had been able to make him wake up. Robin had the vague sense that there was medicine you could inject to wake someone up, but she had no idea what, and she wasn't going to risk just injecting something at random when she had no idea what she was really doing. Even with the aid of a book she wouldn't feel comfortable doing something so potentially harmful.

So the only thing that they'd been able to do was put a bandage on the doctor's head wound and hope for the best. It wasn't very satisfying. But at the very least it didn't look like he had any other injuries, and as far as the archaeologist could tell, his life wasn't in immediate danger.

But this raised several very uncomfortable questions.

"We searched that ship twice", Nami said. "We even looked all over the Sunny and there's no place you can hide on the Sunny that Franky wouldn't know about. So where did this attack come from?"

"Maybe it's an invisible ghost?", Usopp said with a shiver. He looked over to where the doctor would usually be sitting. This would be the moment where Chopper would have a dramatic reaction to that assumption, but of course, this time, nothing came. The sniper looked down at the table, looking deeply uncomfortable.

"There's only one devil's fruit for invisibility", Sanji reminded them. "And I really don't think that guy has made it to the new world, and even if he had his first instinct probably would've been to try and molest Nami-san, not to mess with our engines or hurt Chopper."

Robin could see a shudder running down Nami's shoulder. "You're probably right, we would've known by now if it was Absalom. He's the least sneaky invisible person one could be."

"Cook-san, could you please tell me what the survivor from the other ship said before he killed himself?", Robin inquired. Sanji flinched at the question, but took a deep breath to steel himself. Seemed he wasn't quite as distraught as he'd initially been, anymore. The shock of finding Chopper hurt probably had something to do with that.

"He… wasn't making too much sense, it was all very vague. He said he was sorry, and that he wasn't scared of us, but of something else, he said it was coming for us, but he wouldn't tell us what. And he said that he thinks we're good people, and that he doesn't want to see any more good people die, and then he… Well, you know."

"That's not very useful", Zoro said gruffly.

"Yeah, well, I fucking know that, Marimo. I was trying to get him to tell us more useful things when he suddenly decided to splatter his blood all over my kitchen!", cook-san said irritably.

"Shouldn't have let him get that knife in his hands in the first place", swordsman-san criticized.

"Oh don't you start with me, you…", Sanji said, a look on his face that usually preceded one of their fights. Zoro looked like he would be all to happy to oblige that urge. Robin had a feeling they were picking a fight for stress relief, rather than actual anger at one another.

"Please, I don't believe this is helpful at the moment", Brook interjected. "Perhaps you could fight after we're done talking about this?"

"Don't tell me, tell the shitty swordsman", Sanji grumbled, but he lit himself another cigarette and piped down. For the moment, at least.

"So who did this, and how do we get them back for it?", Franky asked, cracking his massive hand's knuckles. Robin wasn't sure they even needed to be cracking, he probably constructed them to do that just for dramatic effect. It would fit his sense of style. Luffy tried to imitate the movement, but it didn't make any sound in his case because the rubber joints weren't prone to cracking.

"Well, I do have a theory", Robin ventured. "But I'm not sure you will like hearing it."

"Why, what does that mean?", Usopp asked in trepidation. "Is it something really scary?"

"Navigator-san, do you remember what the locks were like when you picked them on the trade ship?"

"Well, yes", Nami said, looking a bit confused about the question.

"Do you think the doors were locked from the outside or the inside?", Robin asked.

"Uh… Well I kind of assumed from the outside, that the killer closed them after killing the people in the rooms… maybe the killer was a real neat freak or something…? But…", Nami chewed on her lip thoughtfully. "I'm not completely sure, you can't tell with all kinds of locks. With most locks it looks the same whether it was closed on the inside or the outside, because the mechanism is no different, but…"

"Yes?", Robin prompted.

"I didn't really think too much on it… but I guess they might've been closed from the inside."

"That's what I thought. You see, when Chopper and I were examining the bodies on the other ship, it occurred to me that it didn't really look like an outside influence had been the cause of their death."

"And what does that mean? You think they all killed themselves? Like the guy just now?", Usopp asked.

"Not exactly. But it looks like the people in the individual rooms killed each other. It's a plausible theory for the rooms I closely examined at least. From the way the bodies are lying and their injuries, it is very possible that they killed each other."

"So you think that entire crew went crazy?", Franky asked. Looking around at the table, Robin could tell that most of her crew mates looked uncomfortable at the idea.

"I don't know exactly what happened or why, this is all still a theory. But it does appear as if the damage done on that ship was done by the people living on that ship themselves, not an intruder."

"I believe there may have been something that influenced them to do that", Robin said. "And if that's the case, it is reasonable to assume that something similar might be occurring on our ship, as well."

"Reasonable doesn't sound like the appropriate word for what you're suggesting, Robin-san", Brook said quietly. He was sitting up very straight, and though his body language wasn't as easy to read as others, Robin had the feeling he was the first one who had understood what she'd been getting at.

"Wait, what _is_ she suggesting?", Nami asked, looking uncomfortable all of a sudden.

"That it's possible that the attack on Chopper and the sabotage of the cola engine weren't carried out by an intruder or in the case of the sabotage by the survivor, but, unknowingly and unwittingly, by one of us."

For a moment no one said anything. The silence around the table was uncomfortable, and Robin was not happy to be the cause of it, but she knew that voicing this theory was essential.

"Do you really think that's what happened?", Luffy asked, in a quiet, serious, tone.

"I don't know for sure, as I've said before. But there was already no way the survivor could've damaged the cola engine because he was being watched and tied to the bed all night. Even if someone fell asleep on watch there's no reason he'd be tied to the bed again in the morning. And he died before the attack on Chopper happened, so he can't have been responsible."

"Maybe he's a zombie?", Usopp suggested. But he didn't sound convinced of his own words.

"You really think one of us would've hurt Chopper? I mean… it's Chopper", cook-san said. There was a distinct greenish tinge to his face, and he looked like he might collapse to the table if he didn't have his arm holding up his head. The swordsman next to him had gone very quiet and the look on his face practically screamed 'dangerous'.

"I don't think that whoever did it knows that they did it, or did it on purpose in any way, I would never suggest something like that", Robin amended. "But I don't have any other plausible theory at the moment, unless we find another survivor or stowaway that might be responsible."

"So what do you think we should do?", Luffy asked in a serious tone. He looked at Robin unblinkingly, and it was an unnerving look to have aimed at oneself.

"We should try to observe each other, try to find if anyone is acting out of the ordinary, and see if this might give us any hints as to who might be under the influence of some foreign entity", Robin explained. "And we should keep an eye out for any other unexplained occurrences, try to make sure that we have all the information we can about whoever our enemy might be."

"Might also be a good idea to try and build some place we could keep someone who's possessed restrained, if we do notice someone acting weird", Franky suggested. "I mean even if that's not really what's going on that might be a good precaution."

"Okay, do that", Luffy said. "Usopp, help him."

"And we should explore the idea of there being some other person that we haven't found yet being responsible", Robin explained. "And I will try and do some research to find out what it is we're dealing with here. There might be references in some of the books about the Grand Line."

"Okay, then let's search the ship. I'm not gonna let anyone get away with hurting my nakama!"


	4. Chapter 4

Zoro entered the galley, making a beeline for the booze cabinet, in the hope to get in and out of the room quickly and avoid being lectured by the annoying cook. The ideal situation would of course be not meeting the cook there at all, but no such luck.

But the cook didn't seem to take much notice of the swordsman entering the room, just standing at the sink and looking at something. Well, all the better. Zoro quickly grabbed a bottle of booze from the shelf, not too concerned about which one he grabbed. Any booze was good, after all.

He turned around, and made to leave the galley again. But as he reached out for the doorknob, he hesitated. A look over his shoulder revealed the cook still with his back to him, as if he hadn't even realized the swordsman was there. Of course that was the ideal situation for Zoro, but something about it seemed off.

"I just came to get some booze", he said, testing the waters with the cook.

"Mhm. Have fun", the blond said, still not turning around.

"Have fun?" Zoro withdrew his hand from the door and turned fully around.

"Or whatever it is you're looking to do with it," the cook said with a shrug. "It's not just for decoration, is it?" He sounded relaxed, and carefree, as if Zoro taking booze was something he wholly approved of. The cook occasionally had personable moments, where he was nice enough only to put up a token fight at Zoro helping himself to the sake, and there'd even been times when he'd given him alcohol freely. But he'd always been aggressive about it.

The darkness in the galley wasn't easing Zoro's suspicion, either. Getting his hand back up to the door he flipped the light switch to illuminate the room.

The cook wasn't doing anything illicit, as the light revealed. He was just holding up a knife and cleaning it. Except…

"Didn't you say you weren't going to use that knife anymore?" Others might've missed it, but Zoro knew blades, even the kitchen ones that didn't hold that much interest to him. And he remembered very distinctly how the cook had said that he could never use this one again when Zoro came to find that the guy from the other ship had slit his throat with it.

"Oh. Well, yeah, but it's a perfectly good knife. Would be a shame to throw it out, you know?"

"You said you didn't want it to touch food anymore, what else would you use it for?", Zoro asked. The cook finally looked up at him, and the relaxed, almost playful look on his face was a far cry removed from his earlier look of horror at Robin's suggestion that one of them may have hurt Chopper.

"Oh, there's lots of things you can do with a sharp object. Wouldn't you know better than me, what with all the swordfighting?", Sanji suggested, spinning the knife briefly in his hand before going back to it with the polishing rag.

Zoro didn't quite understand the cook's reluctance to fight with his hands, let alone weapons. It was so opposite to how Zoro viewed the world, but he'd never really had a problem with it. He didn't have to understand it to respect it, and since the cook could look after himself most of the time, even with that strange hang up of his, it didn't matter what the swordsman's opinion of it was.

But the cook just casually suggesting giving up on that? There was definitely something wrong here, and Zoro had a feeling that it had something to do with what Robin had said.

Zoro moved his right hand to Wadou's handle.

"Hm? Something bothering you?", Sanji asked in a smug tone.

"Where's the real cook?", Zoro asked, his tone low.

"What real cook? I'm the real cook, what are you on about?", Sanji asked, but sounded too casual for the accusation that was being wielded against him.

"You're sure as hell not acting like him", Zoro growled. "So tell me where he is, and you might get out of this alive."

"Was I that obvious? Hm, guess I gotta work on my acting a bit more", the man looking like the cook said, spinning the knife again. "What was it that gave me away?"

"Where's the cook?", Zoro repeated. His patience was starting to run low, but he couldn't risk attacking whoever this was, yet.

"Right here. There is no real or false cook, just this one. The only difference is that he's currently under different management", the cook explained.

"So you're the one who hurt Chopper? Who damaged the engine?" The thought of the cook hurting Chopper didn't sit well with him, the image was just too wrong. But it would've been just the same with any of the others. It was nice to know who he was dealing with, at least.

"Yes, it's been a lot of fun. You should've heard the noise the reindeer made when I clonked him over the head. Actually, come to think of it, how was it that no one did hear it? No on even came to check on him until almost an hour later. Does no one care? Is the 'emergency food supply' this disposable to you all?"

"Don't call him that", Zoro said. If this was really the cook and not an impostor, then he couldn't just cut him down. He would have to be careful with dealing with this, but he already felt his patience waning.

"Why not? That's what he calls him, isn't it? I've been looking through his head a bit, you know. Apparently he thinks you're made of moss? A marimo? I'd never even heard of that stuff before."

"It doesn't concern you. You should leave this ship right away if you know what's good for you", the swordsman said.

"Hm, but I don't really feel like it. It's such a nice ship, I'd like to stay a bit more. The engine is very impressive, Or at least it was until I broke it, but that was a fun experience. Much more convenient to do than slashing sails, I have to say."

"When Franky finds out that you're the one who damaged his ship you will be very sorry", Zoro predicted.

"Perhaps." The cook leaned back on the counter, putting his hands next to him casually. Well not the cook, really, but it was difficult to keep the man he was seeing and whatever it really was he was talking to separate in his head. "But I don't really mind. I think this ship would look a lot nicer if it were painted with more blood. The man from the other boat was a good start, but I think this can be improved."

The thing gestured at the stains still on the floor. Usopp hadn't been done with cleaning when he'd found Chopper and no one's mind had been on housekeeping after what had happened.

"And it's fun to go discovering in this head, too", the thing said. Zoro snarled at that. The idea that the thing that was controlling Sanji could just look into his thoughts didn't sit well with him. He knew he himself wouldn't appreciate such an intrusion.

"I mean, it's completely stupid and ridiculous, but that's entertaining in its own right, isn't it?", it said, grinning. Grinning with Sanji's face, but not the way he looked while smiling and it was a very strange effect to witness.

And some strange entity or whatever it was that Robin had called it insulting the cook while in his body wasn't acceptable at all. Of course Zoro was mostly inclined to agree, the cook could be pretty damn stupid, but him saying that when the cook was around to hear it was an entirely different thing from an enemy saying that while the cook couldn't even defend himself.

"I mean the thing with the women… like really, how desperate can a man be? Pathetic", the thing went on. Zoro was inclined to agree with that, but damned if he said anything of the sort.

"And the dream. Oh my, talk about stupid fairy tales. I mean, really, stories for children don't have to be realistic, but shouldn't you grow up at some point and realize that the world isn't actually some magical place where everything happens exactly as you want it to?"

"Shut up", Zoro said between gritted teeth. Insulting Sanji's habits around women was one thing. Insulting one of his nakama's dreams while Zoro was there was quite another. One of the few really unforgivable things, and doing it while wearing the cooks face in the cook's voice was just the icing on the rotten cake.

"Oh come on, don't tell me you've never thought that? The other dreams in the crew seem to make sense, not that they're all realistic, but at least they're possible. An ocean with every fish ever? I mean, does that man have no idea how nature works? How fish work? Even if there was a place where for some reason all of the fish from every ocean came together, the only thing to expect is for them all to eat each other. Maybe you'd end up with a mix of the fiercest predators from the different seas, but I doubt that would be all that romantic to find…"

"Shut up. Don't make me say it again, or you will regret it", Zoro said.

"Have you never thought about this before? I mean, I guess it doesn't concern you that much, but it is the logical conclusion. Seems this guy isn't logic's best friend, though…"

Zoro had heard enough. He finally drew Wadou from her sheath and pointed her straight at the possessed cook's neck. "I told you to shut up."

"Yes, you did. And you're welcome to make me. Go on, slit my throat, run me through, cut my head off, whatever is popular with the young swordsmen these days. If you really want to do that, that is. Because this is not my neck or my head, and if you do any of those things it's not actually going to hurt me at all. But I gather you don't like the cook that much, anyway, do you? Maybe this is what you've been waiting for all this time. Good opportunity to get rid of the guy without even being responsible for it…"

"I'm sure there's a way you can be hurt. And I will find it", he promised. "Don't expect to get away with the things you've done unscathed, I don't care what you really are, everything can be hurt if you try hard enough."

"The things I've done? Really, the things I've _done_ are what bother you? Please, you've seen nothing yet", the thing replied, leaning forward, so that the cook's throat was touching Wadou's tip. Zoro withdrew the sword the slightest bit, not to put any pressure on the cook's neck. Much as he was convinced he'd find a way to get rid of this thing without hurting the cook, he had to be careful about it, now. "You should be worrying about the things I'm _going to do,_ instead."

"And what is that?", Zoro asked.

"You've seen what I did on the other ship. Everyone dead, drifting in a wind still sea. That kind of thing. I think I'm going to have a lot of fun with you people. If only talking shit about someone's dream gets you this riled up, I'm going to thoroughly enjoy my stay here."

"You're not going to be successful", Zoro said. "You've picked the wrong crew to mess with."

"Strong words for someone who doesn't even have any idea of what I'm capable of. I, on the other hand, know quite a lot about what you can do, and you want to know something?", the thing leaned in further and Zoro had to pull the sword back more to make sure he didn't accidentally puncture the cook's trachea. "I'm not worried."

"Lots of people have made that mistake before", Zoro said. "Don't be so sure of yourself."

"I could say the same to you. But then I guess your confidence isn't completely unfounded, is it? Training for hours and hours on end every day, with weights that should be completely impossible for a human to bear? I admit, I haven't seen that before, and I've been around a bit."

Zoro stayed quiet. He wasn't doing all his training for compliments anyway, and he certainly didn't need his enemy's approval.

"I see from the cook's memories that you and he are rivals, right? Lots of fighting, pretty much on equal footing… are you just humoring him?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" A moment later he realized he shouldn't have responded at all. Best not to play along to this creatures silly games.

"Well, there's no way he's actually on an equal level to you, is he? You train all the time, you're a warrior and you're quite ruthless from what I've seen, too. The cook spends a lot more time baking soufflés than training. There's no way he's equal to you, and I think you know that."

Zoro didn't respond this time. He really didn't want to feed into whatever mind game was being played here. But he had to admit, the way the creature underestimated the cook's abilities was quite funny to him.

"If there was a serious fight between you two, I don't think there's any doubt as to who would emerge victorious is there? You don't really expect him to be walking away from a match to the death between you two, do you?"

The question was pointless, of course. There never would be a match to the death between himself and the cook. They were nakama after all, and that stood above all else. And even if there was one for some reason, he didn't think the outcome would be fixed beforehand at all. But he didn't feel like sharing that with the creature.

"So? What's your point? If you're right, and the cook can't harm me, then I have nothing to worry about, now do I?", Zoro said. "You're controlling him, after all, so I should be able to subdue you easily, if you're right."

"Yes, true", the thing admitted easily. "But I think there's one thing you haven't realized yet."

"And what is that?", Zoro asked.

"You seem to think I'm stuck here. That I can only take control of him", the entity said. Before Zoro had a chance to comment on it, the cook's head gave a strange shake, and for a moment Sanji looked at him in confusion, looking at his drawn sword. Before Zoro had any chance to realize what this might mean, he felt a presence, inside his mind and he didn't have the time to try to do anything about that before everything went black.

 


	5. Chapter 5

Zoro came to with a headache that was out of this world. Thankfully it only lasted for a brief moment, like a stab, before it subsided, and he could open his eyes. He looked around himself questioningly for a moment. He didn't immediately recognize his surroundings, especially not the bars in front of the wall, but then he noticed the rounded shape of the back wall and the sides running towards each other.

He was in one of the compartments of the soldier dock, that had bars in front of it for some reason. Right, Franky had been trying to build something to keep people restrained that were acting strange…

His memories came rushing back to him, and he remembered the confrontation in the kitchen, when the cook had talked to him and acted so strange, and it had turned out he'd been possessed. And he remembered the strange feeling of something foreign probing into his mind.

He didn't remember anything afterwards, though.

"Oh, you're awake", a voice said from the entrance. Zoro sat up fully and looked through the bars. The sea witch sat on a folding chair in front of the bars. "Are you… _you_ again?"

"Far as I can tell", Zoro said. He didn't feel any different than normal at the moment, at least. "What happened, did that thing… get into my head?"

"You were… Franky and Luffy had to work together to restrain you, it was insane", Nami said. "You were so… I mean you looked like you, but the way you acted, it was like I couldn't recognize you. I'm glad you're back to normal."

"Franky and Luffy? What about the cook?" He'd been right there when Zoro had gotten possessed, he would've helped, wouldn't he.

"You… you really don't remember, do you?", Nami asked, and there was something about her tone that made a very bad feeling spread in Zoro's gut.

"No, not a thing", he said slowly. "Far as I'm concerned, I was unconscious."

"I… I guess that makes sense… oh god, I don't even know how to tell you, I thought you'd know", Nami said, looking anywhere but at Zoro.

"Nami? What's going on?", Zoro asked again. "What's going on with the cook."

"You… he's…" Nami started, but then swallowed hard.

"He's dead. You killed him."

Zoro felt like all of a sudden a heavy weight had fallen on him and it was all he could do to try and keep breathing.

"You mean… no, that can't…"

"I… I mean, I know it wasn't really you, but…" Nami's words were stopped by sobs. "All the blood and he's… and Chopper's still not awake, we didn't know what to do, and he's really…"

Zoro tried to say something, anything, but there was nothing that made sense to him right now. He tried to wrap his head around what Nami was saying, he could see the tears running down her cheek, but it didn't make any sense, the cook couldn't be… and there was no way that Zoro could do something like that without even knowing about it.

Even if some crazy ghost had possessed him, he should've known, somehow, right? Killing someone wasn't something he made a habit out of, he'd know if he did that, wouldn't he? There should be some awareness, there was no way he wouldn't know, especially if it was a nakama, right? He looked down at his hands. His swords weren't in the cell with him, and judging from what Nami had said that was a good thing, but he just saw himself holding them, doing… he didn't even know how he would've killed the cook or with which sword, and there was no memory. He couldn't even imagine it.

But looking at Nami again, how she was sobbing into her hands, he must've…

He felt sick and light headed and he felt like he needed to sit down, even though he was already seated. What a… He couldn't even begin to comprehend this. There was no way they'd allow him to stay on the ship, not after this, and they really shouldn't. This was inexcusable, and the idea of the cook just not being there anymore frightened him more than anything.

Footsteps came down the stairs, but Zoro paid no attention. There was no way to atone for a sin like that, even if one could argue for it not being his fault. It didn't matter. He was the one who let it happen, however unwittingly. It wasn't excusable.

"Oi, shitty swordsman, what the hell did you do to make Nami-san cry? Do you want my foot through your face?"

That voice…

But…

Zoro looked up, at the entrance of the cell. Saw who was standing there. Blinked. Still there. Blinked again. No difference.

"Huh?", he heard himself asking. But… wasn't he… how the hell was this even possible, the cook was…

There was a giggle coming from the side, and Zoro turned his head to stare at Nami, who had stopped crying and was now laughing into her hand, and it made absolutely no sense to him.

"Whoops", she said. "Guess the jig is up. Too bad, and here I was using my best acting skills. Though I guess I might've gone a bit over the top, didn't I?"

"What?", Zoro asked, not quite comprehending what was going on just yet.

"I mean, she wouldn't actually cry if the cook died, would she? She seems like too callous a bitch for that."

"Get the hell out of Nami-san's body you shitty entity!", the cook raged, suddenly staring at Nami with a look he'd never aimed at her before, ever, as far as Zoro could tell. And finally the pieces fell together for him, too. This wasn't Nami at all. Or it was, but under 'different management' as the entity had said back when it had been possessing the cook.

And it hadn't managed to use Zoro's body to kill the cook, but instead tried to make Zoro think that had happened.

Suddenly he felt incredibly stupid for ever falling for that. The overwhelming relief, releasing his lungs from the iron grip of terror, however, was stronger.

"Or what?", Nami's voice said. She'd stood up and stepped closer to the cook while Zoro had been busy processing what had just happened. "Are you going to kick me? Hurt me? Make me bleed? I think we both know the answer to that. You can't touch me, not when I'm like this. So I can just keep doing what I'm doing unimpaired and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it."

" _Get out"_ , the cook hissed, and Zoro wasn't sure when the last time was that he'd heard Sanji speak with such venom, and never directed at Nami. Even if it wasn't really Nami.

"Okay", the entity said cheerfully. "But only because this game's more fun if you don't know where I am."

And a moment later Nami's eyes crossed, and her knees buckled. The cook caught her immediately. "Nami-san, are you alright?", he asked in a concerned tone.

"Huh…? Sanji-kun, what's going on, what…?"

"The entity had taken possession of your body, unfortunately, Nami-san. It's gone now, though don't worry", Sanji explained, all the malice instantly vanished from his tone and demeanor.

"Oh… really? Me? That's creepy, I don't remember a thing", Nami said. She righted herself and Sanji removed his arms when she was standing on her own again. "Did I do anything bad?"

"Just said some things that weren't true", Zoro said.

"Oh, Zoro's back to normal, now?", Nami asked, looking at him for the first time. "I guess we can let him back out, then."

"I'll take care of that, Nami-san", Sanji offered. "We're all meeting in the galley to discuss what's going on, I was just coming to check if the marimo was back to normal so you can come, too. Go on ahead."

"Okay…", Nami said. She still looked a bit disoriented, but she followed Sanji's instructions and went up the stairs.

Sanji waited until she was gone and then turned around to look at Zoro. "So, what did she say to you? You're looking at me as if you've seen a ghost, Marimo." He took a drag of his cigarette.

"She said you were dead. That I'd killed you", Zoro said. Now that he had a chance to look at the cook more closely he didn't even look as if he'd been hurt at all.

"And you believed that?", the cook asked, stupid swirly eyebrow raised.

"How was I supposed to know that she was possessed, huh? Didn't think Nami would say something like that for shits and giggles", Zoro tried to defend, but now he felt really dumb about having believed it, too.

"Still, you don't really think you can just accidentally kill me without even knowing, do you?", the cook asked.

"I don't remember anything that happened when it possessed me, how was I supposed to know?", Zoro shot back. But he felt silly saying it.

"Well, for future reference, get your head out of your ass, marimo, even if you really wanted to you wouldn't just be able to kill me, certainly not without being seriously injured yourself." Which was a good point, Zoro had to admit. He wasn't injured at all, and that really should've been a clue to him that the entity had been lying.

"And even if somehow you could, if you somehow had the ability to, which you don't, but if you did. Even then, some shitty entity trying to pilot your body for the first time ever sure as hell can't."

"Fine", Zoro admitted. Not that he really liked saying that Sanji was right, but there wasn't really any way to deny his point. "Now are you gonna let me out of this cage?"

"I don't know, I kinda like you better in there…", Sanji said, looking thoughtful. Zoro sent him an unimpressed glare. Sanji grinned around his cigarette at that. "See, that look is much more like it", he said, and flipped a lever on the floor next to him that Zoro hadn't noticed before. He was pretty sure that had never been there, before, either.

The bars covering the entrance retracted into the floor, and Zoro had to admit he was impressed. "It's automatic?", he asked as he stepped out of the cell. The cook had turned his back to him and was picking something up from the floor.

"What do you expect? If Franky builds something, Franky goes all out", Sanji reminded him. He turned around and had Zoro's swords in his arms. "Here, figure you want those back."

Zoro nodded his thanks and immediately attached them to his sword belt. The cook meanwhile started climbing the stairs.

"Hurry up and follow me, we don't need you to get lost on the way to the galley, marimo."

Zoro rolled his eyes, but decided to just follow the cook up the stairs without saying anything. He'd thought he'd killed Sanji a few minutes ago, the cook deserved some free shots for that.

When they entered the galley everyone was already sitting there.

"Are you completely sure he's back to normal?", Usopp asked, looking at Zoro with a look of fear that the swordsman felt pretty uncomfortable about having directed at him.

"Good as new. Or rather, shitty as ever", the cook said and sat down at the table. Zoro followed his example.

"Alright. So from what I've gathered we have some more information about our enemy, now", Robin started. "We now know that it controls people's mind, and that it can jump from person to person. So far we've seen it possess cook-san and swordsman-san, and others may already have been possessed before without displaying noticeably odd behavior, or at least having been seen doing unusual things."

"Nami was also possessed just now", Zoro added.

"Oh? Nami, are you alright now?", Robin asked.

"Yeah", the navigator nodded. "Mostly a little freaked out, but I don't remember being possessed at all."

"Do the others have the same experience?", Robin asked, looking at Sanji and then Zoro in turn.

"Yeah, pretty much. I don't remember anything up until Zoro was standing there with a sword pointed at my neck", Sanji reported. "It's like I was unconscious or something."

"I don't remember anything, either", Zoro agreed. "When it possessed the cook it said it was looking through his head, too. It said some things it couldn't have otherwise known about him, too, so I believe it."

"What, really? What did it say? Something embarrassing?", the cook asked, looking scandalized.

"Everything about you is embarrassing, cook", Zoro said, rolling his eyes. He wasn't going to repeat the way the entity had mocked the cook's dream, he didn't need to hear that.

"You shitty green…"

"Please, let's focus", Robin said before the cook had a chance to start a full blown fight. Zoro wasn't too sure he would've obliged him, even if she hadn't stopped them. The idea of having killed a nakama was still making him feel a bit queasy.

"So, we know that it can jump from person to person, read their thoughts and control their actions", Robin summarized. "Furthermore, it can apparently use its knowledge of the person from looking at the contents of their mind to act convincingly as if it was the person. So it's not immediately obvious if someone is possessed."

"Wait, so you mean one of us could be possessed right now, and just acting like they're normal?", Usopp shrieked. "Like, it could be here right now? Posing as one of us?" He looked at everyone at the table in turn.

"That's actually quite likely", Robin said. "It would make sense for it to try to find out how much we know about it, in order to better understand how to hurt us."

"So, shouldn't we find out who it is and make sure they're not listening?", Usopp asked.

"That's hardly practical. As soon as we find out it would jump to the next person, there's no way to be sure that no one in the group is possessed", Brook noted.

"Exactly", Robin agreed. "For now, this is a disadvantage we'll have to accept. Until we find a reliable way to find out who is being possessed."

"Can't we just ask stuff that only the person would know?", Usopp suggested. "Oh wait, sorry, that was stupid, it can look into people's heads…"

"Yes. We also don't know yet if it's limited to possessing one person, or if it can control multiple people at a time", Robin said. "For all I know it could be possessing all of you right now, and I'm the only one not affected. Or the other way around, of course."

"That… that was a joke right?", Nami asked, looking uncomfortable. "You don't actually think we're all possessed right now, right?"

"Well I certainly hope so", Robin said. Zoro looked around at the others. They didn't look like they were all possessed, at least. But she had a point, they had no way of knowing if it was limited to one person.

"So, you think it can hear us? Right now?", Luffy asked. His voice was lower than usual, the calm tone that indicated when the captain was serious. Zoro sat up a little straighter at hearing that tone, and he wasn't the only one who did so.

"It would be reasonable to assume, yes", Robin said.

"Okay then, listen up, entity thing or whatever you're called. I don't care how good you are at possessing people, and I don't care that you killed everyone on the other ship. You are not going to hurt my nakama. If you do, I will destroy you. I don't care what you really are, if you pick a fight with us, you're going to regret it."

For a moment none of them said anything. Because, really, there wasn't anything to add.


	6. Chapter 6

Robin was convinced the key to winning this battle was information. And she was also convinced that a devil's fruit was somehow responsible for what was happening at the moment. It was a reasonable assumption to make, since everything supernatural or unexplained she had witnessed in her life had turned out to be the work of a devil's fruit.

So here she was, sitting in the library, all books she could find that had anything to do with devil's fruits piled up neatly next to her. She wished that she had a bit more material to work with, a bigger library like the one in Ohara would probably be a lot more likely to include the right answer, but at least this way she would be done looking at all the available information more quickly.

And she had managed to amass a quite well rounded collection in her time in the Straw Hat crew, so she was optimistic about her chances to find something useful.

The hatch opened, and Robin looked up as a straw hat popped up through it. It was followed a moment later by the owner of that hat.

"Hello, Luffy. Have you come to read something?", Robin asked. He usually didn't, but there had been times when he'd looked through some of the books, mostly just leafing through them, looking for pictures or something that would catch his interest.

"No, I just wanna know if you found something yet. That we can use to stop this stupid entity thing."

"Not yet, I'm afraid", Robin said, looking down at the book she was currently looking at. "But I believe that this has to be a result of a devil's fruit in some way, and I have high hopes that we have a useful book in our collection."

"Good", Luffy said, nodding. "I wanna kick that thing's ass, for breaking the ship and hurting Chopper." He came closer, standing next to her to look at her book over her shoulder.

"A sentiment I fully agree with", Robin said with a hum. "Now if you'll excuse me, I'll go back to my research." She looked down at her book again, and reached out to flip the page when suddenly a rubbery arm twisted around her neck.

She had no time to react, hadn't expected an attack, and maybe she should've, but it was too late now. Her head was forcefully turned to look at her captain, and the look she saw on his face was one she'd never seen there, before.

"I don't think you'll be going back to your research", he informed her. But it wasn't really him, of course. It was the entity, possessing him. For some reason she hadn't thought to assume he was affected, because Luffy was so often immune to things, it just hadn't crossed her mind. She had a feeling that mistake would cost her dearly.

His arm was twisted around her neck twice, his hand on her chin. If it decided to kill her, it would only take a minor release of the tension, and her neck would snap. Even if she manifested hands everywhere, she wouldn't have time for a counter attack under these circumstances.

"You know, I wasn't too sure who to kill first, on this ship. The first kill is always important, that's when they realize that the problem is a lot bigger than they thought, and it's very demoralizing. The beginning of the end, really. That's when they start killing each other when they suspect one of them might be possessed. That's my favorite part, you know."

The entity paused, apparently waiting for Robin's reaction, but she didn't say anything. Didn't want to indulge in whatever the entity had planned. Doing what it wanted felt like losing, and even if she might not be on the winning end of the confrontation, she wouldn't give it that satisfaction.

"I thought of the reindeer first, because it's small and cute, and no one could ever hurt it, right? I hear the marines only think it's your pet. But then I changed my mind, the crew is so small I wanted to savor the game more. Killing someone that early, when you weren't really aware of the danger yet would've meant this whole thing is over a whole lot more quickly than I'd like for it to be.

"So I just incapacitated it, so that if any killing didn't come out so neatly, no one would be able to save the victim. A bit of insurance for me.

"I had my eye on you being the first one for a while, you know", it said, using Luffy's rubber neck to lean in further, until their noses were almost touching. "You're too smart for your own good, I hear that's been a problem for you in the past, too. And they're all looking to you for guidance, they actually think you'll find something that can defeat me. You won't, of course, but they all have that hope. Hope is always a fun thing to kill."

It paused again, looking at Robin promptingly, but she still remained quiet.

"And then it was the question of who to use to kill you with. Doesn't really matter in the Grand scheme of things, of course, since you'll be dead afterwards and won't remember, but in a crew as close knit as this one, picking the right murderer is always important.

"You know, I thought of the cyborg, at first. Because you seem to have some special connection with him. And he said some inspiring things to you when you thought your existence was a sin, didn't he? And trusted you enough to burn the plans to that weapon? So that would've been a good choice."

Robin's poker face was very well trained. She could keep her emotions to herself better than anyone else on the crew, better than many professional spies she'd met. She hoped it was good enough right now, for the entity not to recognize her discomfort at the idea of Franky threatening her like this.

"But then I decided that wasn't good enough. This is better. Because while that guy helped drag you out of the darkness you used to live in, your captain is the one who did most of the work, isn't he? Without his inspiration you would never have come this far, and that's an important thing to note. He's the one who believed you were a good person when no one else would, he got you to admit that you wanted to live when the world told you you needed to die.

His betrayal is going to hit you the hardest", the entity concluded, looking smug at the idea.

"He's not betraying me", Robin replied. "He's not in control of his body right now, I know this. I know that he's being controlled by someone else, I don't feel like he's betraying me." Sure, she hadn't meant to participate in the entity's games, but she felt like this needed to be clarified. That it would not manage to break the bond of trust that connected her to Luffy, and that it could never even begin to scratch its surface. Even if it did kill her now, she would never blame her captain for that.

"Knowing and believing something are completely different things", the entity said with a grin. "Of course I know that you know it isn't him, but you see his face, you feel his hands, you smell him, even. Is your mind really strong enough to make you ignore all of these things? Do you really think, that if you feel my hand twisting your face and snapping your neck, that the last feeling you ever have won't be one of betrayal?"

"You're not going to make me cower in fear or whatever it is you're trying to accomplish here. And you will certainly never make me doubt my captain, no matter what you might chose to do", Robin said.

"Hm. Well I hope your friends reactions will be more entertaining than all of this false bravado. I'm getting bored of this."

"Who says it's false?"

"It always is…" The entity was going to say something else, but Robin had no idea what it was, because in that moment the sound of the trapdoor opening made both of them look over to the front of the room.

"Robin-chwan!", a voice trilled. "I made some coffee for you, to give you energy for all your magnificent undertakings!" A moment later a tray was put next to the hatch. Robin tried to think of something she could say to make him stay away, but she very much doubted there was anything that wouldn't raise his suspicions and just make him enter the room faster. The entity made a thoughtful look spread on Luffy's face, and Robin felt distinctly uncomfortable at seeing it.

"I hope your research is going well", cook-san said as he climbed up the stairs himself. "If you want help, with reading stuff, or a foot massage, whatever it may be, don't hesitate to ask."

The blond head came up through the hatch, sporting his usual swooning face, but he stopped dead when he saw the scene that he had stumbled upon.

"Cook. How nice of you to join us, come in", the entity possessing Luffy said in a friendly tone. "Close the hatch behind you."

The cook kept staring. Robin could only imagine how it must look like from his perspective, but she had the feeling that if their position had been reversed she probably would've been just as shocked as he was, now.

"Climb all the way up, that wasn't a suggestion", the entity repeated, sounding a lot less inviting now. The cook finally complied and climbed up, closing the hatch behind him slowly.

"Good. Now I'm sure that this goes without saying, but you will follow all my instructions just as I give them or I snap her neck, is that clear?"

"Yes", the cook said warily. He looked at the entity possessed Luffy intently, undoubtedly trying to figure out a way to get him to stop having his arm wrapped around Robin's neck. But it looked like he was arriving at the same conclusion she had before. There was no way he'd be fast enough in whatever he decided to do to avoid her neck being snapped in the same time.

"Good. Now, don't be so tense, sit down. Right where you are", the entity instructed. The cook looked at Robin as if for confirmation, but there wasn't really much input she could offer him. He sat down after a moment.

"In the lotus position, please. I assume you know what that is?", the entity said, and Robin was struck by how wrong the way the entity talked sounded from Luffy's mouth in Luffy's voice.

"Lotus position? Why?", the cook asked, but then looked scared for a moment. Maybe he was wondering if the entity would take him questioning it as a reason to kill Robin. She was wondering so herself, but the entity just chuckled, and didn't seem to be taking offense.

"Isn't it obvious? It's the best way I can think of right now to restrain those legs of yours. That's the way that'll take you the longest to untangle, so if you do decide to attack me I'll have ample time to prepare a reaction." It looked pointedly at Robin. "Of course we both know that you're smart enough not to try to attack me at all, don't we, Cook?"

The cook didn't answer, but grudgingly grabbed his legs and folded them so he was sitting in the lotus position, the soles of his feet pointed upwards.

"Very nice. Now, don't be so tense everyone. We're all just having a nice chat", the entity said, glee evident in its voice. Robin really would've liked to slap that expression away. She'd thought Franky speaking in Choppers body had been bad. This was a million times worse.

The entity reached behind it with the arm it didn't have wrapped around Robin's neck, and reached into the waistband of Luffy's pants.

Robin didn't know what was going on, until there was a clattering noise. She looked over to where Sanji was sitting. A short distance in front of him there was a knife. One of the kitchen knives, from the looks of it, but Robin couldn't tell much else about it.

"What's that supposed to mean?", The cook asked, looking up from the knife at Luffy, narrowing his eyes. "You already made clear that if I attacked you, you'd kill Robin-chan. Guessing you don't want me to make a nice vegetable stew here, do you?"

"No. I'm not particularly in interested in food at all."

That was probably the strangest thing that the entity could've said while in Luffy's body. Sanji looked equally as flustered as Robin felt at hearing that.

"So, then, what? If you want me and Robin-chan to fight to the death or something, save your breath, that will never happen."

"No, though it's an entertaining idea, that's not what I had in mind", the entity said. "Go on, take the knife."

Sanji still looked doubtful, but of course he had no choice other than to follow the entity's instruction, so after a moment he leaned forward and took it. Robin had to admit she was impressed by his flexibility, not that it mattered in the current moment. But she knew she herself probably wouldn't have been able to bend forward like that if she'd been sitting in that position, at least not without intense pain.

"Good. Now, slit your own throat", the entity said sweetly.

The cook paled several shades, and gaped at the entity. Robin herself felt like a stone had been dropped down her stomach.

" _What?_ ", Sanji asked, gaze flitting from the entity to the knife and back again.

"Or not, that's up to you", the entity said in a friendly tone.

"Then I'm gonna go with not, sorry to disappoint you", Sanji said.

"Oh but you don't know the deal yet", the entity said. "I think you should wait with your answer until you've heard that."

"So, what's the deal then?", Sanji asked, sounding a bit annoyed.

"Simple, really. You have a choice here, it's all up to you what happens. Either you take that knife and slice your own throat with it, around the side, so your carotid artery gets severed… or I snap her neck."

"Weren't you going to do that, anyway?", Robin asked, unimpressed. She could tell that the cook was suddenly finding the idea of slitting his own throat a lot less ridiculous than he had a few moments ago, and there was no way Robin could let that happen.

"Well, I was going to, yes, but now we're making a deal, here, you see?", the entity said. "This is a lot more interesting than just snapping someone's neck, so I'm prepared to make a few concessions."

"I thought you wanted me dead at any cost", Robin insisted. Not that she wanted to be killed, but she most certainly didn't want the cook to do something very very stupid that would probably not even stop her from being murdered, anyway.

"I never said that. I thought you were a good choice for the first one to die, but I'm not completely married to the idea. As I said, I'm prepared to make concessions. The deal I have to offer is a pretty good one, too. My plan is, of course, to kill everyone on this ship, just like I always do, but if the cook takes this deal, I will alter that plan. If he does as I told him to, then you will not be killed. Not now, not after he's dead, not at my hands at all. I will make sure that you will stay alive, no matter how chaotic the situation on this boat may yet become."

The entity shifted its gaze back to Sanji, who was sitting very still and seemed to be listening carefully. "If you don't take the deal, then I simply snap her neck as I've been meaning to. But unlike her if you take the deal, you won't have any immunity from being killed later, yourself. Think about it this way: _You_ will die either way. _She_ might not have to."

"How do I know I can trust your word?", the cook challenged. Which sounded a lot more like he was considering it than Robin was comfortable with.

"My word is all I have. I am not a physical being, like you, so there are no possessions in my name, nothing I hold dear. So I tend to value my word a lot more than other people do. If you take this deal, then I promise, no hidden meaning, no trap, no nothing, that Nico Robin of the Straw Hat crew will not be harmed by me."

"You lied to the swordsman this morning", Sanji interjected.

"True. But that was just for fun. You should've seen his face. And it was a harmless thing I did there. No one got hurt, it was just a little game. This, this is different. I am not lying to you, I promise."

"Of course there are no guarantees I can give you. Except for one. If you put the knife away, then she will die. So I guess that's a gamble you have to decide for yourself if you're willing to take. Is your distrust of me strong enough to make you comfortable watching her die in front of your very eyes?"

"One of your nakama? A woman, too? And you could save her, but instead you just sit around and look at it happening? Is that what you want?", the entity taunted. Robin was feeling more and more frightened, the more Sanji looked like he was making a very unwise decision. She hadn't really felt scared when the entity had threatened her alone, but now…

"And, let's be realistic here, too, which one of you is more important in the grand scheme of things? The woman searching for a truth so powerful it might topple an oppressive regime that has had the entire world in its grasp for eight centuries? That lets corruption and slavery reign? Or the man looking for a fairy tale ocean, that, let's be clear on this, doesn't exist, and could never exist, because he wants to fry some fish?"

Robin could see the attack on All Blue's veracity hurting the cook. It was written plainly over his face, and she knew the entity saw it just as well as she did. She knew that Sanji had endured mockery of his dream like that for years, so he should be used to it, but unfortunately the entity's initial assessment was right. Hearing the voice of their captain say it was a whole different thing. Even if his mind knew that it wasn't really Luffy, the heart was more difficult to convince of things like this.

"Cook-san, don't listen to it", Robin felt the need to interject. "The entity is not trustworthy in the slightest, there is no way it would actually give up on killing me if you do this."

"So what, he should just accept that you're going to be killed in front of his eyes and not do a single thing about it? How cruel, do you really think he would act like that?" The entity shook Luffy's head disapprovingly. "Looks like you have pretty low opinion of your nakama Ms Robin."

Sanji's face was still pale. But there was a resolve there that Robin really would've preferred not to have seen there. It was the kind of look the cook had on his face before doing something very stupid. It wasn't exactly a rare look for him to be sporting.

He raised his hand with the knife.

"Sanji, don't do this. I've seen enough people die for me, I'm not going to let that happen again." The memories of the people of Ohara were fueling the tremor in her voice, and she hoped that Sanji understood how serious she was about this.

"Maybe they do it because you're worth it", Sanji said, a bit of a sad smile on his face, and Robin felt her heart rate rising.

"I'm serious, Sanji, if you do this I will never forgive you!", Robin said again, but it felt like Sanji wasn't listening to her properly anymore.

"I'm sorry, Robin-chan", he said, and the regret was evident in his voice. "But I couldn't watch him kill you."

And with that he raised the knife to his neck properly and closed his eyes and Robin tried manifesting a hand to steal the knife from his grip, but she wasn't fast enough before—

"SANJI! STOP!"

 


	7. Chapter 7

The knife slipped out of his suddenly numb hand, and clattered on the floor as it dropped. For a moment everything was frozen, Sanji sitting on the floor, Luffy's arm wrapped around Robin-chan's neck and Robin-chan staring at the cook with wide eyes. He'd never seen her look so scared before, but it couldn't even begin to match how scared he felt, himself.

Had he been wrong? That voice just now, was it not really…? Barely a second passed, but his mind's eye managed to show him several different versions of how it would look if the tension in that coiled rubber arm released and snapped the archaeologist's neck.

A moment later, the arm gently unwound itself from Robin-chan, not doing any damage, and Sanji remembered how to breathe. She looked shaken, raising one hand to her neck absently. Shaken was fine, shaken was good, shaken wasn't dead and that was all that mattered, and who wasn't a little shaken, these days? Sanji himself would be the first to admit that he wasn't feeling all that steady, either.

A sandaled foot kicked the knife out of the way, and Sanji's gaze followed it, it clattered again and didn't get far. It was so shiny, he didn't remember cleaning it, the last he remembered of it was seeing it covered in the survivor's blood, except he wasn't a survivor, anymore, was he? They'd never even learned his name.

A firm hand on his chin dragged him from his musings and turned his head to come face to face with his captain, intense eyes burning with a fire that he'd seen countless times before, rarely directed at him, but always chilling and impossible to fake.

So it really had been Luffy's voice that had yelled to stop him, Luffy's not the entity's. And he'd been right to drop the knife before he could… before… And Robin was all right, it was fine, and shouldn't he get back to breathing normally at some point? Like… soon?

"No killing yourself! Ever! No exceptions, captain's orders!", Luffy ordered. It reverberated in Sanji's soul, and he gaped at his captain like a fish, trying to make a sound, but nothing came out. "Understood?", Luffy added, still staring at the cook intensely. Sanji nodded, not even sure how forming words worked at the moment.

"Good. That goes for everyone!", Luffy yelled, and stood up. Sanji looked past him back at Robin, who seemed just as stunned as he felt. It was an odd thing to see. She chose to stay quiet often, but he didn't think he'd ever seen her speechless.

"What goes for everyone?", Usopp's voice asked from down the ladder, muffled through the trapdoor, but apparently Luffy had been loud enough just now to be heard through it. The captain stomped to the hole in the ground and kicked the trapdoor open. As he jumped down to the galley with a grand disregard for the ladder he repeated. "No killing yourself, ever!"

"What?!", Usopp's shriek carried back upstairs. "Why would you say that? Why is that a rule we need? What?"

"Luffy, wait!", Robin yelled, getting up and running to the trap door. Apparently she was done being frozen by shock, and that was nice. Sanji liked Robin-chan not being shocked. Robin-chan should be happy and drinking coffee and making morbid jokes and not staring at him in terror when he was just about to… about to…

His gaze shifted back to the knife, laying just a few feet to his right. He really didn't remember cleaning it, but it was very obviously the knife that the man from the other boat had used to kill himself with, and someone had expertly polished it. There was no outward sign of it ever even having been used for cooking, let alone suicide.

Except…

There was a droplet of blood, clinging to the edge of the blade, reflecting the light of Robin-chan's reading lamp in a menacing way. The survivor's blood would have dried long ago, this was all liquid and fresh…

He reached his hand up to his neck. The small cut burned when he touched it.

Under his fingertips, under the fine cut, his pulse was beating a mile a minute.

He felt sick.

 

Usopp was confused and scared and he didn't like it. Being scared wasn't exactly a rarity for him, but usually at least he knew what it was that he should be scared about.

Luffy's declaration that no one should kill themselves had shocked him to his core, and to be honest, his initial reaction had been wondering if it had been directed at himself specifically. Not that he had any reason to, he hadn't said or even thought anything in that direction in ages, and even at his most negative points he'd never been suicidal, and Luffy wasn't a mindreader, anyway…

So someone else must've been the reason he said that, and that realization made him feel hot and cold at the same time.

Luffy had just dropped down to the galley and looked livid, pacing around, and for a moment Usopp was scared to approach him.

"Where did it go? I don't care if it's just a ghost, I gotta beat it up!", Luffy said.

"What? What happened, Luffy, who tried to kill themselves?", Usopp asked, praying in the back of his mind that whoever it was had really just 'tried' and not actually succeeded.

"Luffy, how did you do that?", Robin's voice came down through the open hatch, and a moment later her feet appeared in the opening, closely followed by the rest of her as she climbed down the ladder.

"Do you know where it went?", Luffy asked her.

"How did you make it leave?", Robin asked, an intense look on her face as she reached the bottom of the ladder. Usopp wasn't sure what to make of that expression, but he knew he'd never seen Robin look quite like that before.

"What's going on?", Usopp asked again, only to be completely ignored by both of his nakama.

"I want to beat it up!", Luffy said again. His fists were balled up, but without a clear target for his ire it looked more helpless than menacing.

"Luffy, try to focus, please", Robin said, putting her hands on his shoulder. "You made the entity leave your mind, right?"

"Yeah, but I wanna know where it went!", Luffy repeated.

"That's not the most urgent thing right now. You need to tell me, in as much detail as you can, how you did that?"

"How I got rid of it?", Luffy asked, confusion taking over his expression. "Uh… I dunno?"

Usopp still didn't really understand what they were talking about, but he looked up when the hatch to the library closed. Sanji was coming down the ladder, looking white as a sheet. His hand was shaking as he made to grab the next rung, and that alone was enough to concern Usopp. Off the top of his head he couldn't remember ever having seen Sanji's hands shaking.

"Sanji?", he asked cautiously, as the cook arrived on the galley deck and immediately plopped down onto the couch, staring down at his still shaking hands.

"No one else has been able to get rid of the entity's possession thus far, not even been conscious at all while it was in their mind, but you managed to cast it out. That ability might prove key to defeating it, so the more we understand about how you did it, the better", Robin urged from behind Usopp. So Luffy had been possessed by the entity, then, and managed to cast it out? That was definitely something worth paying attention to, but looking at the cook on the couch breathing shallowly and looking like he might throw up any moment made Usopp's decision on what to focus on for him.

"Sanji?", he asked again, sitting down next to the blond and putting a hand on his shoulder. He could feel it trembling underneath his palm. "Hey, what's going on?"

"Uh…", Sanji stammered out, his voice sounding breathy and weak. "I… I'm really stupid", he ground out, followed by a humorless chuckle.

Usopp fought the urge to say something along the lines of 'well that's not new'. There was a time and a place for teasing, and it looked like right now was neither.

"Uh… I dunno… I just… made it… leave? I wasn't really thinking how, just that I needed to?", Luffy said, sounding unsure of himself.

"Sanji, hey, focus on your breathing, all right?", Usopp instructed. "In… and out…"

For a moment the cook followed the rhythm the sniper set for him, but then he suddenly said, "If he'd just… just a second later and I'd be… I would've… that's… oh god" He buried his face in his still shaking hands.

"Did you use haki, maybe?", Robin asked.

"Maybe? It was just like… I knew something bad was happening, and I needed to stop it, so I… tried to wake up. I guess that's what it was like? I don't know, does that help?", Luffy said.

"There was no guarantee it would've kept its word", Sanji went on, mumbling into his hands so that Usopp had trouble properly understanding him. "It probably just would've snapped Robin-chan's neck, anyway, the moment I was… and I knew that and I would've done it anyway… how messed up is that?"

"Just in… and out…", Usopp said again, not that Sanji was really listening to him, anyway. His energies seemed to be focussed completely on his breakdown right now. Usopp's urge to ask what was going on had disappeared quite quickly as a picture started forming in his head.

"So, you were aware of the situation?", Robin asked behind them. She sounded a bit more calm, now, but nothing like her usual unflappable self.

"I really… I almost… what's wrong with me?", Sanji asked. This time he actually paused as if he was waiting for an answer, but Usopp didn't have one for him.

 _No killing yourself, ever_ echoed in Usopp's head, closely followed by: _I really almost…_

"Not really, I didn't know where I was or what was going on", Luffy said. "But I knew something was bad and that I needed to stop it."

"And you know what? If I were in that situation again I wouldn't do anything differently", Sanji said, raising his head a little, but still staring at his hands. "Cause I could never just stand by if something was going to happen to Robin-chan."

Usopp still didn't know how to answer. He was usually very good at talking, but this time nothing really came to him.

Except that Sanji looked like he could really use a hug.

So Usopp pulled him in, resting a hand on the blond's still trembling back. Sanji didn't react for a moment, but then he grabbed Usopp's arms and clung to them with shaky hands.

 


	8. Chapter 8

In the two days it had been since Franky had found the engine damaged, he hadn't slept at all. He usually appreciated cola mostly for its inherent superness, but at the moment the caffeine content was winning his favor more and more.

By now he'd taken apart most of the engine, put most of it back together again, and still didn't have anything to show for it. For every fault he fixed there seemed to be five more and at several junctions he'd had the feeling he hadn't even improved anything by working on it.

And his concentration wasn't at its peak, either, if he were honest. With all the things going on around the ship it was difficult to keep his focus on the mechanical parts in front of him. Cook bro had apparently been a few seconds away from killing himself at the entity's demand, and meanwhile Franky had been sitting down in the belly of the ship not noticing anything was amiss.

It gave him the irrational fear every time he went down to inspect the engine that when he came back up to deck, he'd have one or more nakama less than before, and he wouldn't have done anything to help them.

Realistically he knew that down here was the best place for him to be, because if he didn't fix the engine they'd be stuck in this god forsaken puddle of ocean for longer than their food stores lasted and then it wouldn't matter how many of them the entity talked into hurting themselves. So he needed to take care of this, trust the rest of his nakama to take care of themselves and each other. Didn't stop his gut feeling of dread that was following him around from distracting him, though.

"How are the repairs coming along?" Franky hadn't heard anyone come down the stairs, and that would've told him, even without hearing the voice, who it was. There was no one else on the crew as stealthy and elegant as Nico Robin.

"Well, I've found about fifty things that _weren't_ the problem", Franky said, sitting back on his haunches and rubbing his head with a massive hand. Several other crew members had come to ask him how he was doing, and he had to admit his patience was running out with some of them. But this was the first time Robin had come down to ask, and even if it weren't, he had the feeling his patience could handle her inquiries just fine, if not everyone else's.

Best not to question that, too much.

"But not the problem itself?", Robin supplied.

"Pretty sure there's not just one problem. I _know_ some of the things I fixed were bad enough to stop the entire engine from working, but it's still not doing what it should", Franky said in frustration.

"But you are making progress then, right?", Robin asked. "If you've already found several problems I'm sure it's just a matter of time until you get it working again."

"Yeah…", Franky said with a sigh. Confidence was usually not an issue for him, but after two days of useless work, his reserves were dwindling. "At least I've got it to the point where it makes noises again. Really unhealthy noises, mind you, but at least it's something."

"So…", Robin started thoughtfully. "That means that soon I need to come up with a new way of sabotaging the propulsion, then."

"…What?" He'd been facing the wreck of an engine for the entire conversation so far, but now he turned to look at his nakama. Outwardly she looked fine, just like normal, but there was something about her expression that made his dreadful gut feeling increase sevenfold.

"I have to admit, it's not my area of expertise, but I hear you're always supposed to set yourself new challenges to keep your mind active", Robin said, and the smug satisfaction in her tone sent a shiver down the cyborg's reinforced spine.

"You're not Robin", he said carefully. He hadn't talked to the entity himself, yet, but he knew he had to be on his guard. Apparently it liked manipulating people, and he was determined not to let it do that to him.

"Well, that's always relative. In a way, I am. In a different way I'm not", the entity said. "This body is hers, at the very least, and I am gaining more and more insight into her psyche the longer I stay in her head. My initial assessment was right, you know, she really is the sharpest crayon in this particular box."

"Get out of there", Franky hissed. His fist opened and closed, but he knew that he had no chance to physically do anything. If he attacked the entity, he would only succeed in hurting the archaeologist, and that was the last thing he wanted.

"But why? It's such a nice place to be. She has very nice skin, you know", the entity said, and ran a hand along the side of Robin's face. "And good eye sight, too. Sometimes I enter minds of people who need, but don't wear, glasses, and that can be quite annoying."

"I said, get out", Franky repeated. The hand running down the side of her face had wandered down the side of her neck and was now tucking on the neckline of Robin's clothing, and while it wasn't moving much or even revealing anything it make him incredibly angry to see. Sure, it as Robin's own hand, but she had no control over this and it was sickening.

"No", the entity said, a smirk on Robin's face. It knew exactly what it was doing and which buttons to push to make Franky angry, apparently. Didn't he just decide he wasn't going to be manipulated by it? Easier thought than done. "But do feel free to beat me out of here. Maybe your 'strong right' would be a good method?"

Franky just sneered at it. He wasn't going to let himself be baited by this hateful creature.

"It really might just work. You never know until you try", the entity said, leaning nearer to him.

"You just want me to hurt my nakama, and it's not going to work", Franky said resolutely.

"Oh, isn't it? That's not the impression I had two nights ago", the entity said, with a triumphant grin.

"What? What do you mean?", Franky asked, though his gut was already telling him he wasn't going to like hearing whatever this was going to be.

"Well, when you beat the little reindeer into a coma, of course", the entity said carelessly.

"…What?", Franky asked, his voice suddenly shaky.

"It didn't even take two hits for it to lose consciousness. And the look on his face when he realized the hit was coming, too late to evade… oh the betrayal… it was really quite heartbreaking", the entity mocked. "But then, I don't suppose that applies to you, does it? Do you even still have a real heart, with all that metal in your body?"

The cyborg wasn't really paying attention to the jab about his physique anymore. He wished he could just accuse the entity of lying about Chopper, but he just knew that it wasn't. He'd been wondering since Robin's initial theory that it was one of them responsible, who it might've been, and he'd been dreading just this outcome.

He didn't remember doing anything, he hadn't even noticed a particular gap in his memory, but he'd been sleeping when it had happened, and from what sword-bro had said about being possessed by the entity he probably wouldn't have been conscious, anyway.

And of course he didn't know what Chopper's face had really looked like, if the entity was just making up details to hurt Franky even worse with the knowledge, but his imagination eagerly supplied the image of the little reindeer, scared and betrayed as a giant fist was coming down on his little brain point head.

"That body of yours is a bit difficult to control, I'll admit", the entity went on, scratching Robin's chin. "I did my best to hold back, because I didn't want to pulverize the little critter. I wanted the body to still be recognizable, otherwise that would've just caused confusion if someone found a furry smear on the floor. Only realized later that I'd held back too much, and it was still alive."

The entity moved closer to Franky, to the point that there were only a few inches between their noses, and he had to stop himself from flinching backwards at the proximity.

"But I won't fail next time", it whispered, and Franky couldn't help shivering at the tone.

"You already failed twice, what makes you think you can do it? This crew isn't going down so easily", Franky said. There was a slight quiver in his voice, but he fought to keep it under control.

"Oh you mean how I didn't kill the cook? Doesn't matter, I'll get him later, and that display was still thoroughly entertaining. Unlike you, with that engine here, I'm not working to any deadline. I can take as much time as I want. I literally have nothing better to do." It chuckled a bit.

"And you want to know a funny thing? Being inside Ms Robin's head here, is giving me lots of ideas on how to proceed. She really is quite a fascinating person. I imagine you know this, but she used to be an assassin, and quite a good one from what I can tell from these memories. And imagine you don't know this, but sometimes she comes up with plans to assassinate people, just for fun. Seems mostly focused on a man called Spandam, but she has ideas on how to kill every single one of you. Would be a waste not to put at least a few of these into practice."

"You're lying!", Franky accused.

"She's quite a morbid woman, you know", the entity continued. "You've heard her make jokes, does it really surprise you? If it makes you feel any better, she would never consider putting any of these plans into practice."

It paused, and moved even closer to Franky's face. The cold smirk spreading on her face made his guts twist. "That's what I'm here for."

"You're never going to succeed", Franky reiterated.

"Funny, that's what I was going to say to you", the entity said, sweeping a hand to gesture at the broken engine. "You know, it's a bit sad, how I've used you to outsmart you. All the damage I did, I did with the knowledge about this engine that I got from your own mind. In theory, you should be able to figure all of this out, and fix it."

She abruptly stood up and, turned to leave. "If you stay alive long enough to do it, that is."

The sound of her laughter as she ascended the stairs would haunt Franky's dreams the next time he went to sleep.

 


	9. Chapter 9

_Too gloomy…_ Brook thought, as he put his violin down with a sigh. Not a literal sigh, of course, since he had no lungs, but with all the feelings and intentions of a proper sigh.

He'd been hoping to dispel some of the tension on the ship by playing some uplifting and inspiring music, but as it turned out, his psyche didn't quite reflect that noble intention, and so every piece he'd been trying to play had turned into something ominous and gloomy instead. And if that was all he was capable of playing at the moment, it was probably better he play nothing at all.

They were still moored next to the empty ship, not because they had the anchor down, but just because the sea was so still that they hadn't even drifted away from it, yet. Standing at the bow, looking at it, he had to do his best to keep reminding himself that he wasn't actually looking at his crew's old ship.

Of course he wasn't, the ship was of a completely different construction, had different colored sails, and was in a much better condition, too. The last time Brook had seen his old ship it was rotten and damaged, and that wasn't true for the one he was facing at the moment at all.

And yet he could not avail himself of noticing the similarities, if not in look, then in feeling. A completely empty ship, unable to steer, filled with decaying bodies… in a year this would probably look quite similar to how Brook's old ship had looked when he'd finally been able to find his way back to his body.

"Don't wanna play any more?", Usopp-san asked, coming up next to him. The sniper leaned on the railing and looked up at the tall skeleton.

"Alas, no… my thoughts carry me to places that don't led themselves all that well to musical interpretation", Brook lamented. "At least not any appropriate melody when the crew needs its spirits lifted."

"Yeah… it's been pretty crazy around here", Usopp-san agreed, looking up at the other ship in contemplation.

"That is quite an understatement", Brook admonished. "How is Sanji-san doing?" A few hours ago Brook had gone into the galley only to find Usopp-san comforting the shell-shocked cook. After he'd had the reasons for that explained to him, Brook felt the shock was well justified.

"A bit better. He's smoking a lot right now, but I think he's gonna be okay."

"That is encouraging to hear", Brook replied, folding his back down to lean on the railing himself, next to the sniper.

"Well, then, I suppose saying something discouraging is in order, next", Usopp-san said. There was a distinct glee in his tone that hadn't been there before, and it made Brook look up.

"I beg your pardon?", Brook inquired cautiously.

"I've been meaning to talk to you, specifically, I figured it was a good opportunity to jump into this conversation", Usopp-san said with a smirk.

"Ah. I presume I'm speaking to entity-san, then?", Brook said stiffly, and drew himself back up to his full height.

"'-San'? You really are a gentleman skeleton, aren't you? None of your other crew mates were that polite. You should teach them some manners, sometime."

"I don't believe you've given them much reason to be accommodating", Brook stated. "Don't mistake my social graces for kindness, for I don't harbor any positivity toward you."

"How cold", the entity said, raising his hand to Usopp's forehead in a dramatic gesture. "Looks like I'm not making any friends around here."

"If making friends were your intention, I imagine you would've acted differently thus far", Brook noted. The a devilish grin spread on Usopp-san's face.

"True", the entity agreed. "Making friends hasn't been among my priorities in a long time. But really, my popularity isn't what I came to talk to you about, anyway."

"So then, what else did you come to say?", Brook inquired. Best to get whatever the point of the conversation was over quickly. He didn't feel like playing into the entity's strange mind games, but he had a feeling it wouldn't leave him alone if he were just to try to leave.

"I was going to talk to you about your future. Or your past. It's really one and the same, you know?", the entity paused, turning back to the empty ship in front of them. "I've looked into several heads while I've been here, and there I learned that you have quite a tragic past behind you, don't you?"

"Is there a point to this?", Brook asked impatiently.

"Fifty years on your own, completely abandoned on a ship that can't steer, surrounded by the rotting corpses of all of your friends…", the entity went on. "Truly a terrible fate… how do you feel about doing it all again?"

Brook didn't visibly react to the question. Not having facial features to make expressions with had its disadvantages, but his poker face was among the most flawless that could be asked for. Inside, though, he had to suppress a jolt of panic at the idea. Just staring at the other ship and being reminded of his past ordeal was bad enough, the idea of going back to that nebulous and dark hell was even worse.

"I'm sure I've mentioned this a few times before", the entity continued when Brook didn't provide it with an answer. "My plan is on killing everyone on this crew. Just like I did on that other boat. Just like I did on many other boats before that. I've never left any survivors, for various reasons but I've decided that this time is going to go a little bit differently."

For a brief moment Brook had the hope that it was going to say: _You're all so very nice, I'm just going to let you go unharmed, this time._ But he didn't even finish the thought before scolding himself for the silly idea. That would be far too easy, and he knew from long experience, that things only very rarely went the way you wanted them to, without putting a tremendous amount of effort into them.

"I'm going to leave you alive", the entity said. Had Brook had eyebrows, this would've been the point to raise one of them questioningly. As it was he just tilted his skull, trying to convey the same sort of expression.

"I'm going to spare you, to stay on this ship after I've killed everyone, with no way of getting anywhere, and I'm going to let you drift for many many years. I'm going to find out the lifespan of that whale, and once I know that he's dead, I'm going to get a ship to come for you, so that you can fully enjoy the failure your life has come to."

Brook felt a stab of irrational anger at the mention of Laboon, and behind that there was an even deeper sense of terror at the prospect of drifting alone at sea, and losing all his nakama. He suppressed all of these, though. Best to stay calm.

"Ah. I see. Of course, you're only doing that for sadistic reasons. You've decided that by keeping me alive, you're going to be able to torture me more than if you were to kill me. Or did you? You see, I have a different theory. I think that, because of my admittedly unusual, situation in life, you have no idea how to kill me, and now you're trying to dress up that fact to make it look like it was your idea."

The entity chuckled, drawing up Usopp's eyebrows. "Well, you got me there, it seems. True, I don't know how to kill you, I don't even know if that's possible. But that doesn't mean my plan isn't a good one. The reason I'm doing it doesn't matter as much as the result, now does it?"

"Which is also a moot point, because that result isn't going to happen at all", Brook stated with conviction. "You're not going to succeed in killing anyone on this crew, so the scenario you described is never going to happen."

"Oh, isn't it? I think you're only so confident because you weren't there when the cook was about to slit his own throat just because of a few things I said to him."

"Well, then, if you're so skilled at this, then why hasn't he slit his throat? You're really going to use an instance where you failed as evidence of your imminent success?"

Usopp-san's eyes narrowed at that. "I think none of you have really grasped the danger of the situation, yet. You all have this unfounded optimism that you can just solve every problem if you throw enough willpower or friendship or whatnot at it. I've only been toying with you, so far, but that's not going to last. And as soon as the first corpses litter the deck, you're going to see how wrong you were about this", the entity hissed.

"Let me say this again: there are not going to be any corpses littering the deck. You will not be successful, that, I promise you", Brook repeated.

"You don't understand what you're up against, now do you? I could take this body right now, stick his head in the canon and shoot it. I could reach into this bag and take one of those pop greens, stick it in his mouth and wait for it to expand to the point that his skull explodes. You are all completely at my mercy", the entity said. It pointed towards Usopp's bag, and while it didn't make any move to reach into it, Brook stared at the offending hand warily.

"And it wouldn't even be much of a loss, for anyone, now would it?", it went on. "Take out one of the most useless members of the crew, I bet the cook would even thank me, one less mouth to feed. He's been worried about the food supplies, you know."

"For someone who claims to get his information about this crew from our member's heads, you display a surprising lack of knowledge", Brook said. He really meant to keep calm, but he found that his hand had moved to hover over his cane handle. "Calling Usopp-san useless is clearly false."

"Oh is it? You know whose head I got this from?", the entity said, turning around to rest agains the railing with his behind. "This one", it tapped the side of Usopp's head. "I don't think I've ever had to wade through a jungle of self esteem issues as deep as this one before. But it's not like he's unjustified. If I were as pathetic as he is, I'm sure I'd have a negative view of myself, too."

"Usopp-san is not pathetic", Brook growled. He'd been meaning to keep his tone neutral, but now he was starting to get angry. Which was exactly what the entity wanted, of course, but he couldn't stop himself at hearing that. "In fact, I'd argue that out of everyone here, _you're_ the pathetic one."

"Not pathetic? I mean, I thought the cook's dream to find a nonexistant ocean was sad, but that's before I learned of this guy's ambition in life. _Becoming a great warrior of the Sea_? Really? Seems like that should be a prerequisite for even visiting the Grand Line."

"I don't think it's up to you to judge anyone's dreams, when all you seem to do is destroying other's lives."

"But I'm in the best position to do so, really. I have an insight into people's heads that no one else has, so who else is more qualified to judge? And I still say that this is one of the dumbest dreams I have ever encountered. I mean, let's face it, he's not on the same level as the other people on this crew. He even recognized that and tried to leave once, as far as I see."

Brook hadn't been there himself when the incident in question had occurred, so he didn't know all of the details, but there was one thing he was very certain of. He didn't want to continue listening to this hateful spirit keep disparaging Usopp using his own voice. Of course he could, and would defend his nakama, but he knew that it was pointless to try. The entity was just saying whatever it thought would make Brook the angriest, and it was working.

It was controlling the conversation just as it had been controlling all of the situations it was in ever since it had arrived on the ship. And it was time for that to stop.

"Forgive me, Usopp-san", Brook said solemnly, and the entity grinned at him, eyeing the bony hand that still rested on the cane sword's handle. It probably thought that Brook was going to launch a physical attack in order to stop it from talking and thereby damage his nakama himself, but Brook's intentions were wholly different.

He'd been thinking about this possibility for a long time, ever since he'd acquired the ability to detach his soul from his body during their two year training period, but he'd always shied away from ever attempting it, because he'd been convinced that this was hardly ethical.

Usopp-san had probably been unable to hear his apology, but the situation called for it, anyway. He was about to do something he'd consider an unforgivable invasion of privacy under any other circumstances, but in this case he just had to believe that the potential benefits outweighed the harm.

He'd been getting better at doing this. Taking a deep breath, or not, for the absence of lungs, Brook swiftly left his body. There was a short, odd feeling of displacement and weightlessness that always accompanied this particular technique.

Behind him he heard the clank of his old bones falling to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut. The entity's expression was changing, it was staring at him with suspicion, but he didn't leave it any time to say anything.

With a decisive moment, Brook's disembodied soul moved forward, straight past Usopp-san's nose, and into his skull.

The sensation was a very odd one. A bit similar to returning to his own bones after an absence, but heavier, somehow. The body seemed to be pulling him in place, settling him in with a force he'd never experienced before.

And immediately he could feel the presence there that was so wrong. He felt the creature's alarm as if it were his own emotion, but he ignored it. It seemed to protest or want to ask him a question, but in this space they were beyond words.

He met it with determination, and focussed all of his concentration on removing this foreign force from his nakama's head.

The entity fought back, pushing against Brook's soul, and giving him flashes of odd images, a sense of desolation and loneliness that was starkly familiar and unsettling, but Brook would never permit himself to lose this confrontation.

Despair, regret, and an absolute absence of hope poured into his soul from the outside, so he met it with memories of his own. Of captain Yorki requesting his favorite song, of Luffy-san casually inviting him into his crew, of loyalty among a crew unique as few others and unmatched in dedication to each other.

He could feel the sadness and anger that was pushing at him fading, but he would not let up. He pushed further, focusing on music, his lifelong passion that could garner his concentration like no other. Binks' Sake was the song strongest in his mind. It had carried him through pain and heartbreak, brought him hope and joy and this time it would bring him victory.

And just a few verses in, it did.

He felt the entity leaving, and it almost felt like the first ray of sunshine after a storm front had passed. Taking a deep breath, he opened his eyes.

And then blinked a couple of times.

Nami-san was standing in front of him, an eyebrow raised, and waving her hands in front of his face.

Not _his_ face, though.

He turned, looking back at his own body, lying in a heap on the floor, looking oddly colorless, like he usually saw it when he left it as a soul.

But not looking quite like it usually did, either. Nothing did, because he wasn't seeing it like he normally would. He was seeing it through eyes.

He blinked a few more times. Such an odd sensation. It had been fifty-two years since the last time his vision had just cut out like that if he weren't sleeping. Just a brief moment of not seeing anything, and then it was all back.

"Usopp? Are you okay? You're acting a bit weird. And what's up with Brook, anyway?"

"Yohohoho…", Brook whispered, and heard Usopp-san's voice leaving his mouth. Felt his lips moving to form the sounds.

"Yohoho…? Wait… Brook?! How the…? What's going on?"

"Ah, yes, I should probably get back…", Brook whispered, but for the moment he was spell bound, watching his fingers move at his command. Touching them to one another made him able to feel their strange texture, skin moving against skin, no bone in sight…

Though of course it weren't _his_ fingers at all.

And that was when he finally snapped out of his daze. "Oh dear, this really won't do. I apologize, I'll be right out…", Brook said, and closed his eyes again. Usopp's eyes. Not his eyes. He had no claim on these eyes at all and it was wrong for him to ever make use of them. It took a moment to concentrate enough and focus enough on his own soul's energy, distinct from the body it was inhabiting. He gathered all of it together, detaching himself again from the strange sensations of the living body he was inhabiting, and with one last tug of all of spiritual energy, left.

It was tougher than leaving his own body, maybe because he wasn't practiced in interacting with the unique energy of living forms as opposed to his own, but the moment he made it out felt quite similar from how he'd left his own body. Suddenly he felt lighter and freer.

But sadder, as well. He drifted back into his own body quickly, settling into the bones, and acutely felt the loss of the sensations that being in Usopp-san's body had provided him with.

 


	10. Chapter 10

Usopp's eyes crossed and Nami had to scramble to catch him as his knees buckled beneath him when the skeleton's soul left his body. She wasn't quite strong enough to keep Usopp's weight up all of a sudden, so she sank to the floor with him. Looking behind the sniper, she could see Brook's soul settling back in where it belonged.

"Wha… huh…?", Usopp mumbled, blinking rapidly.

"I'm so very sorry about this Usopp-san, I assure you, if I'd had any other means at my disposal I would've chosen that. It really was an act of desperation, not meant as an invasion of your privacy at all", Brook pleaded, standing up. Looked like he'd recovered from whatever had been going on a bit more quickly than the sniper.

"…Wait, what?", Usopp asked, and putting a hand on the floor pushed himself up to a sitting position, which Nami greatly appreciated, because she'd been holding him from a somewhat awkward angle that had probably been quite bad for her back.

"Unlike the entity I had absolutely no insight into your thoughts or memories, if that makes it any better", Brook added, wringing his bony hands and looking very uncomfortable.

"What?", Usopp repeated.

"I really hope you'll be able to forgive me, but if you can't, I fully understand."

"Uh… Brook? I think maybe you should explain what you're apologizing for, first. Because I saw some of it, and still have no idea what went on, and it looks like Usopp knows even less", Nami threw in, tired of watching her two nakama talk completely past each other.

"Oh. Uh… I'm sorry, I thought you might've been aware, Usopp-san", Brook said, putting a hand up to scratch his afro. "Well, you see, you were possessed by the entity and I attempted to remove it from you. Successfully, too, but the method I used was hardly ideal and I'm very sorry for using it on you without your consent."

"Wait", Nami interjected. "You got the entity out of his head? I think everyone should hear that."

 

It only took ten minutes to assemble everyone in the galley. The navigator looked around the room to take stock of how everyone was doing, and she wasn't happy with what she saw. They hadn't even been dealing with this situation all that long, but the toll it had taken on some of them was evident.

Robin's hair was sticking up in odd places, from running her hands through it probably, and while the effect wasn't that strong, it was the least put together Nami had ever seen her look outside of physical confrontations. She also had another book with her, and was reading it intensely while everyone settled around the table.

Luffy was radiating a barely contained anger, looking supremely unhappy that he hadn't had any opportunity to beat anyone up, yet.

Franky had dark circles under his eyes, and was covered in oil and grease. He was also shooting suspicious looks around the table, looking at Robin in particular almost fearfully.

Sanji-kun was chain smoking like there was no tomorrow. Nami was half tempted to ask him to stop, because at the volume he was going she just knew everyone's hair was going to end up smelling like stale cigarettes, but she refrained. At least he had some color back in his face, and after what happened she couldn't really blame him for his coping mechanism.

Usopp mostly looked confused, while Brook looked very uncomfortable. In the intervening time he'd apologized at least five more times.

Looked like Zoro and herself were the ones handling the current situation the best. At least Nami liked to think she was handling it well, and Zoro was wearing his customary scowl.

"Okay, Brook, now explain, how did you get the entity out of Usopp's head?", Nami prompted. Robin looked up harshly at that.

"You managed to make the entity leave?", she asked.

"Ah, yes", Brook confirmed. "The entity was possessing Usopp-san at the time and saying… unpleasant things, as I'm sure most of you have encountered it doing already, and I decided to try to do something about it. Now mind you, I had no chance to ask Usopp-san if he was okay with that course of action, and I'm very sorry that I didn't have that opportunity, but I felt it would be a better idea to try rather than let the situation continue."

"So, I left my body with my soul, as I'm sure you're familiar with, and in soul form I entered Usopp-san's head."

"You can do that? Awesome!", Luffy said, his enthusiasm for the idea momentarily returning him to his usual cheerful self.

"Well, I honestly didn't know if I would be able to do it, because I have never tried something like that before. But I was able to push the entity out, and afterwards was momentarily in control of Usopp-san's body."

"You were able to push it out? Do you think you'd be able to repeat that?", Robin asked, looking intently at Brook.

"Well… I wouldn't want to impose myself upon anyone unasked… but in theory, technically, I don't see a reason I wouldn't be able to repeat that success", Brook said.

"Well, I really don't mind", Usopp said decisively. "I'd much rather have you in my head than that hateful creature."

"Me, too!", Luffy declared enthusiastically.

"Yeah, you're my skeleton bro, not some shitty entity, feel free to do whatever you need to", Franky agreed. The rest of the crew chimed in with their agreement.

"Oh… well, in that case I suppose I'd be able to reproduce this result", Brook said, looking a bit overwhelmed at the support. Well, as far as he could look overwhelmed or anything, of course.

"Very good", Robin said. "This can give us a decisive advantage. If we're able to remove the entity from people, we're able to minimize its ability to do damage. Also, I believe I've discovered what we're actually up against." At that, everyone looked up, staring at her.

Robin held up her book. "This is a very old version of the devil's fruit index, that contains some of which there hasn't been enough evidence to include them in the current version. I think this is what our enemy is using." She put the book on the table and opened to a page. She pointed at the entry in question, but Nami was sitting too far away to see what it said.

"Omo omo no mi?", Sanji-kun read out loud. "Thoughts?"

"Precisely", Robin said. "It's a Logia type fruit that hasn't been reported in close to 200 years, I assume that's why the authors of the current index didn't believe that it actually exists."

Clap. Clap. Clap.

Everyone turned to stare at Zoro, who was clapping slowly, with an expression that didn't seem all that impressed.

"Good job", he said in a bored tone.

"Oi, marimo, the hell are you being so rude to Robin-chan for?", Sanji-kun asked, enraged, looking like he was just seconds away from launching himself across the table to kick some manners into the swordsman.

"What? I applauded. How is that rude?", Zoro asked, but something about his tone… Nami hadn't interacted with the entity much herself, aside from being possessed by it for a bit, but if something was off about Zoro that was probably the most likely explanation at the moment.

"And I really am impressed", he continued. "200 years and no one else ever managed to figure out how my power worked or who I was. Too bad that knowledge won't help you at all."

"So, we're speaking to the entity, then?", Robin said, subtly, but noticably crossing her hands. The tension for everyone else at the table had risen, too, Usopp reaching for his bag, while Nami felt her own hand wander to where she kept her clima tact. Not that they could do anything physically, but it was just such an ingrained instinct to reach for your weapon in the presence of the enemy.

"Yes. I like that name, by the way. Most people just call me that thing, or the madness, or terror or something like that. The people on that other boat", Zoro gestured vaguely in the direction where the other ship was moored, "never even realized that people were being possessed and couldn't control themselves when I was in charge. They just thought that they were crazy because of some disease or something and needed to be purged. Really, that's about par for the course."

"So, you're confirming that I'm right about the devil's fruit", Robin said coldly.

"Yes. You are. I have no trouble admitting that, because it doesn't change anything. Whether you think I'm a ghost or a devil's fruit user, hell even a super advanced microrobot or anything, it doesn't matter at all." It leaned back in the chair and put Zoro's arms up behind his head casually.

"I beg to differ", Brook said. "Understanding your enemy's capabilities is always a step towards victory."

"But knowing that I have a devil's fruit power doesn't change the fact that I'm in complete control of whomever I possess and thus can do all the damage that they could do to others or themselves. How that power works is inconsequential."

"But if we know that you're a person using a devil's fruit to turn into thoughts", Usopp started, before another thought evidently occurred to him, "wait, thoughts? I thought Logia turns you into elements, thoughts aren't even a substance…"

"We fought that guy who turned himself into jelly that one time", Nami reminded him.

"Oh… yeah, I guess. Still, seems weird. Anyway, no, point is", Usopp said, getting back on track, "Now we know that all we need to do is wait for you to turn back into your human form, slap some seastone handcuffs on you and, presto, no more danger!"

The entity burst out laughing, and it was weird to see. Zoro usually sounded different while laughing, and somehow it was making a different expression than he usually did when he was smiling.

"What's so funny about that?", Franky asked. Usopp, next to him, looked a bit offended at the laughter.

" _Wait for me to turn human again?_ Good luck with that, I doubt you have that kind of free time."

"You're bound to do it at some point. Even shitty manipulative thoughts clouds have to eat sometime", Sanji-kun interjected. "We'll get you."

"Oh you'd be surprised. But, feel free to try that waiting strategy, I'll continue doing my thing in the meantime."

"Why are you so convinced that waiting for you to solidify would be a fruitless endeavor?", Robin inquired.

"Because, I've been waiting myself, but it's been 200 years since the last time I was solid. Who knows, maybe you're right and it's going to happen any day now. But I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for it if I were you", the entity proclaimed.

"200 years without eating?", Sanji-kun asked, pulling up his oddly shaped eyebrow. "That doesn't seem physically possible."

"And why haven't you chosen manifested yourself? I imagine only existing as pure thought has some disadvantages", Brook asked.

"Well, it was not a matter of my _choosing_ skeleton-man. That's like me asking you why you didn't just chose to leave the Florian Triangle after your shipmates died. The simple truth of the matter is that I can't."

"How do you mean?", Robin asked.

"Well, I suppose there's no harm in telling you", the entity said, looking up thoughtfully. "Not like it's going to help you."

It leaned forward and rested Zoro's head on his hands. "A long time ago, there was a government scientist who wanted to invent a method of stopping Logia users from going into their elemental state, to make them less dangerous. He wanted to weaponize that, so that people without any talent for Haki could defend themselves against them. I, somewhat unwittingly, became part of his experiments, but he wasn't very good at what he was trying to achieve. Instead of making it impossible for me to enter my Logia state, he made it impossible for me to leave it. I've been living as an invisible 'cloud of thoughts' as you put it, ever since."

"Can you tell us what that scientist did?", Usopp asked, interestedly.

"Well, you'd only use it to try to defeat me, so I think not. But I don't know what he did, anyway, so there isn't much to tell."

"This is all quite enlightening", Robin said, turning away from Zoro as if here weren't just possessed by their enemy. "This means that we have a realistic chance of neutralizing the entity."

"Oh, it does?", the entity asked, amusement coloring its tone.

"Now that we know that it is in fact a devil's fruit user, most specifically a Logia type, I think it's confirmed that Luffy was able to drive it out of himself using Haki. That's a very useful observation", Robin explained. "This means that it should be susceptible to the rest of the Haki users, as well."

"Well, if I recall, this guy is one of your Haki users", the entity said, and pointed at Zoro's chest. "And he's not doing much to drive me out, here."

"Well, luckily, we have an alternate means of achieving that", Robin said, gesturing in Brook's direction. "Brook-san, if you'd please?"

"Oh don't bother", the entity said easily. "I'll leave on my own, for now. You think you're smart enough to beat me? Fine. I'll give you ten minutes to come up with a plan, and then we'll see if a ragtag group of pirates can outsmart a scientist that lived 200 years before them."

"They will!", Luffy said with conviction. "My nakama are super smart, and you'll be sorry you ever tried to mess with us."

"Well, then I guess it'll be entertaining to see you try making good on that promise", the entity said, and a moment later Zoro's eyes crossed and he slumped forward in his chair.

"Okay, everyone put on your thinking caps, then!", Nami said. "That stupid fruit user is going down…"

 


	11. Chapter 11

Sitting out in his position on deck looking at all the other nakama, Usopp was again doubting his role in this plan. It had all sounded very smart when Robin had explained what she needed everyone to do, but the fact that part of the plan was supposed to be dependent on his still nascent observation Haki skills wasn't exactly filling him with confidence.

And not because he wasn't confident in the skills he had, but rather that this was quite outside of the spectrum of things he'd attempted before. Try to hit a target hundreds of meters away? Sure, no problem for Captain Usopp. Spot the movements of an invisible being? Yeah… not really?

Next to him, Sanji didn't seem nearly as uncertain as Usopp did, even though his role in the plan should have made him more nervous than any of the rest of them. There was no guarantee that it would work, and several of them had argued against Sanji attempting this, but he didn't seem like he was worried at all. Damn that easy confidence that Usopp himself always had to fake.

They were all gathered on the upper deck above the galley, sitting in a circle. Brook was fidgeting, most of the others looked tense, while Luffy seemed to be on a much more even keel now that they had a concrete way of dealing with the entity.

"Anything, yet?", Franky asked.

"Uh… not as far as I can…" Usopp started. "No", Sanji said in the same moment.

Both Usopp and Sanji were supposed to concentrate their observation Haki on their nakama sitting in a half circle in front of them, because it was both of their specialty. Not that it really counted as a specialty when you'd just discovered that you could do it, did it? Usopp couldn't have picked which one he was better at, because he hadn't even been able to use any color of armament Haki so far.

So Usopp was trying to stay in Haki mode, but his concentration wasn't all that great at the moment.

Except… was that…?

"There's something", Usopp announced. He wasn't completely sure of what it was, but it looked like a hazy mist in the dark evening sky, and switching between using his Haki and just looking at it it appeared and disappeared.

It was moving slowly, almost indecisively, so it was difficult to track, but now that he had something to pay attention to Usopp had an easier time keeping up his Haki.

It hovered around the half circle of people for a bit, but suddenly it vanished. Usopp blinked, trying to find it again, but he couldn't find it.

"Luffy", Sanji said. Looking at Luffy Usopp couldn't see the mist anymore, and he couldn't really see any difference, but he supposed the cook wasn't just saying it randomly.

"There I go, then", Brook announced. Franky caught his body that fell down as his soul left it. It rushed at their captain before the newly possessed Luffy even had a chance to do anything, and a moment later, both Brook's soul and the mist reemerged.

"It's back out", Usopp announced, not that that was really a surprise after Brook had done his thing, but he felt the need to confirm that he was seeing it again. Sanji next to him was squinting his eyes. "Don't you see it?", Usopp asked.

The cook shook his head. "No. I could sense Luffy's energy changing, but I can't see it when it's outside."

"Oh", was the only thing Usopp could think of to that. He hadn't really considered the intricacies and differences between different users of Haki before, but it looked like Sanji's observation Haki worked differently than his. Good thing they seemed to compliment one another in this case.

"It's on the move", Usopp announced, and a moment later he couldn't see it anymore.

"Robin-chan", Sanji observed, looking thoroughly displeased at that development. Again, Brook rushed at her and it seemed to take even less time before his soul emerged from the archeologist, and the mist to return. Looked like the skeleton was getting good at the "possessing people" thing. Maybe that would come in useful in some other situation, too, Usopp mused.

"It's coming here", Usopp said, as the cloud of mist moved closer to where he and Sanji were sitting. Which was the plan, of course, but now that he could see it, seeing it move toward him gave Usopp the strong urge to just run away.

He held out, and a moment later he couldn't see the entity anymore. But he also wasn't unconscious, so there was really only one possibility.

"It'd got Sanji", he announced, and almost immediately Zoro stood up and grabbed the cook's shirt, hauling him away.

"What's this? Is your skeleton out of milk?", Sanji's voice asked. "Aren't you going to chase me out of this one, too? Not the most sustainable plan, really. You're going to have to keep the skeleton chasing me indefinitely if you want to stop me from doing any damage."

"Or we could just stop this whole thing altogether", Franky said, opening the hatch to the aquarium's water tank.

"Huh? What are you…", was all that the entity had time for saying before Zoro pushed the cook's body including the offending ghost into the water. Usopp kept his Haki senses trained on the hatch, but he couldn't see any new mist emerging.

"I didn't see it leave, I think it went into the tank with him", Usopp said after a moment of no mist. "Do you really think Sanji's going to be okay?", he added timidly.

"It was his own idea", the swordsman said, shrugging. Which was true. The cook had argued for him to be the one to try this with, since he was the best swimmer in the crew, and Usopp had been grateful for that, because he hadn't fancied being thrown in the water while unconscious, but now he couldn't help feeling worried.

"Well, either it works as we envisioned, or the entity rematerializes while still inside of cook-san's head, and then his skull explodes all over the water tank walls", Robin theorized coming up next to them. Usopp felt a shudder run down his spine.

"You don't really think that's…?", Usopp asked. Robin just smiled her mysterious little smile that made the sniper feel exactly 0% better.

"I'm going in to see what's going on", Zoro announced, untying his sash and letting his robe fall down to the floor, before he dove into the water tank himself.

For a moment there was nothing else to do but wait. From here there wasn't a good view of what was going on in the aquarium. Would it really work? The theory had been that saltwater repelled Devil's fruit users powers, so maybe immersing the entity in it completely would force it to materialize again. But if what Robin had just said happened, instead…

A loud splash announced Zoro's return, and he bodily hauled out a form onto the deck that none of them had ever seen before. Nami was on it lightning quick and closed a set of seastone handcuffs around the wrists.

Zoro climbed out of the tank himself, followed closely by Sanji, who, aside from being dripping wet, didn't look any worse for wear. He coughed up a bit of water, and then turned to look at the person they'd just fished from the water.

The rather naked person, Usopp was just now noticing. Naked female person… He felt a blush rise in his cheeks, but at least it was not nearly as noticeable as the one on Sanji's face. Almost immediately Nami pressed a tissue under the cook's nose.

"Don't you dare have a nosebleed over her, she nearly killed you", the navigator instructed sternly. Sanji nodded and took the tissue, but he was visibly struggling to keep his composure.

Several hands appeared from the floor and picked up Zoro's discarded robe to drape across the naked form. Zoro looked disapprovingly at his robe being used that way, but Usopp was pretty sure it was for the best.

The person in question didn't seem to mind all that much. She didn't even seem to care that she was now handcuffed. She just kept staring at her hands with a sense of wonder, not making any move to try to escape.

"Looks like we did it", Franky said. "And cook-bro's head didn't even explode!"

"Wait, what?", Sanji asked, turning to the cyborg in shock.

"Question is now, what do we do with her?", Nami asked.

 


	12. Chapter 12

Initially he hadn't been sure if going down there would be a good idea, but now, standing here and looking at their prisoner, Brook felt it had been the right decision.

The skeleton had been wondering if deliberately seeking out someone who was known to manipulate people to bring out the worst in them was a good idea. There was a big difference between having someone you loved and trusted saying terrible things, and a stranger who was bound and locked up, though, so he needn't have worried.

"Hello", Brook announced himself, because so far their captive hadn't even looked up yet at his entrance into the soldier dock. She did, now, though, and it was a strange face greeting him. Like it wasn't completely solid, not completely materialized. Like looking at someone through misty glasses, but everything around her was in perfectly sharp focus.

"Hello", their captive replied. He wasn't sure what her expression was supposed to be, with the odd wavering quality of her features, but he supposed it could be interpreted as a smile. "Come to gloat over your victory?"

"Not quite", Brook replied. He decided that this conversation would be better held face to face, so he sat down. Even sitting, he was much higher up than their prisoner who was hunched over on the floor, but it was closer, at least. "I'd actually been wondering if you would tell me a bit more about yourself?"

"Why?", she said. "You won, I'm probably not going to survive the next day, it doesn't really matter, now does it?"

"Whether or not you survive to see the next day is not set in stone, yet", Brook reminded her. Zoro-san had argued in favor of just leaving her on the other ship, so that she could not pose a threat to anyone anymore, and several others had disagreed. Sanji-san had been vehemently opposed, presumably partially because she was a woman, but he'd seemed to have a much deeper problem with the idea of leaving someone to starve. In the end Luffy had stopped the discussion. It was the captain's decision after all. But he had not announced yet what his decision would be.

"Maybe", the entity allowed. "But I'm not exactly an optimist."

"What's your name?", Brook asked. The entity looked surprised at the question.

"Why do you care?"

"Well, I think it's only natural to want to be able to properly address whoever you're speaking to", Brook said neutrally.

"I see. Eylea. Eylea Lucentis", she introduced herself.

"I would say that it's a pleasure, but I don't feel like that would be quite accurate to the circumstances of how we met", Brook replied. At that, she really did smile, quite openly.

"No, I suppose it wasn't a pleasure for you. It was a surprisingly good thing for me, though", Eylea said with a chuckle.

"Why do you this? Why come to ships and then try to manipulate everyone there into killing each other? What's the benefit to you?", Brook asked, finally getting to the heart of the issue.

"Why not?"

"I could think of a number of reasons. Empathy might be one of them. Another might be that if you kill everyone you encounter, you always stay lonely."

"Astute observation", she complimented. "You have a point, of course, but I've stopped caring about being lonely or not a long time ago. Years and years of isolation have a way of changing you. I imagine you know quite well what I'm talking about."

"I do. But that's precisely why I don't understand your actions", Brook countered. "If you're always alone, shouldn't you cherish any company?"

"Over 200 years ago, I was turned into an invisible cloud of thoughts, without any way of ever getting back to my former self. I could project myself into other people's thoughts, of course, but no one was ever welcoming to that idea. I drifted from head to head, desperate for a bit of attention, or just the ability to have an influence on the physical world surrounding me", Eylea recounted.

"I couldn't do anything by myself, barely even navigate where I was going, because in my elemental state my perception of my surroundings isn't very good. I ended up on a ship that ended up sinking because of a storm. And from then on I was drifting across the ocean, for close to a century before the next time I encountered any people. Gravity doesn't apply to thoughts, and the sea repels me as a devil's fruit user, so I was never able to enter the water and pull of the trick you and your crew mates used on me by myself.

"So when I finally encountered a new ship, I wasn't quite in my right mind, as you might imagine. And their reaction to me possessing one of them wasn't favorable. They thought I was an evil spirit or a demon or whatever, and they thought that the only way to save themselves was by killing him. I tried to talk them out of it, explain my situation, but they wouldn't listen. They killed the man who had been my vessel, and that made me angry, more angry than it should've, maybe, but it was the first time I'd possessed someone while they died, and that's not a pleasant experience, I can tell you.

"It made me want revenge. And I got it. That's how I started doing this, and after a few more bad experiences, I didn't even give anyone the benefit of the doubt anymore, and just decided to go for maximum damage as soon as I encountered the ship."

"You don't seem like your sanity is all that impaired, now, though", Brook noted.

"Appearances can be deceiving. Especially in people who spend most of their time being invisible", Eylea said, smiling again? It was still hard to tell. "But you're right. I used to be angry and insane, but I'm not any more, haven't been in a long time. I just never felt the need to change any of my behavior."

Brook wasn't sure what to say to that, so he stayed silent.

"Who knows, another fifty years on your own, and maybe you would've ended up just like me. That's why you're here, isn't it? You sense that there's something similar between us and you want to convince yourself that you could never be like me."

"I can't deny that there are similarities between our situation, but talking to you, I think I've found the key difference", Brook replied. "You don't have anyone that you care about, do you? Back when you lost your form you already didn't have anyone, did you? That's why no one helped you back then, and that's also why it's so easy for you to hate everyone around you."

"I had people that I cared about. Turned out they didn't care enough about me."

"And I assume their betrayal is something that you will always carry around with you, isn't it?", Brook supplied. "And that's where you and I differ. While the people you used to have in your life gave you pain and resentment to carry around, the ones I had gave me a promise and hope to carry with me. I've never resented other people for being happy, I only wanted to have the chance to share in some happiness."

"Hm", the entity scoffed. "Maybe you're right."

For a moment they both stayed quiet. Which made the footsteps coming down to stairs all the more noticeable. Brook looked up to see their captain approach, a rare unreadable look on his face.

"Oh, are you here to deliver my judgment?", Eylea asked, sounding more amused than anything. "Are you going to snap my neck right here, or is there more of a ritual to it? Maybe walking the plank? Is that something that pirates nowadays still do? There's a certain elegance to it, at the very least."

"You seem oddly calm about the prospect", Brook noted, when Luffy didn't say anything, he just came to a stop in front of the bars of the makeshift cell.

"I don't think it's all that odd. After everything I've done, it's only natural to expect these consequences. And it's not like I'm afraid of dying", she said with a shrug. Luffy tilted his head.

"Chopper woke up", he announced. "He's fine."

"Oh? Well that's certainly joyous news for you, I imagine", the former entity said, sounding not too interested in the subject. "So you're trying to tell me he wants to see my execution, too? I suppose I can wait a few more hours if that's the point of this."

"Are you looking forward to dying?", Brook asked.

"Does that surprise you?", Eylea said with a small smile. "200 years I've yearned for nothing more than my existence to finally end. Not that I had many methods at my disposal, but I can't even count how many times I unsuccessfully attempted suicide. You defeating me this way is probably the best thing that ever happened to me. I got to experience the sensation of having my own body back for a few hours, and I'm finally going to be put out of my misery."

"No", Luffy said simply. She blinked up at him, an incredulous look on her face.

"What do you mean, no?"

"We're not gonna kill you", Luffy stated.

"What is that supposed to mean? You're not going to kill me? Why would you ever even consider saying that? After everything I did, you'd have to be insane to leave me alive."

"I told you. Chopper woke up, no one really got hurt."

"So what? I was going to kill them, you know that, I never made a secret out of that. I almost turned you into a tool of killing one of them, remember that?"

"Of course I remember", Luffy said. "But you failed. Everyone's fine."

"Tell that to the people on the other ship!", the entity said, her tone getting more enraged the longer she talked. "What about them, what about their families, don't you want to seek justice?"

Luffy squatted down at that, and looked her directly in the eye. "I'm not a Marine", he said. "I don't seek justice for people I don't even know. If their families want revenge on you, then that's their problem. But I'm not going to kill you, and neither is anyone else on this crew. Nami and Robin are going to figure something out what to do with you once we reach the next island, but I promise you, no one's going to kill you."

"Why?", Eylea asked, finally sitting up properly and getting her face closer to the bars.

"Because you want to die", Luffy replied. He stood up and turned to leave. "I don't like you, I'm not going to do what you want. Come on, Brook."

Brook stood up himself and followed his captain up the stairs.

Ignoring their captives enraged shrieking to get back down there, and they couldn't just do this.

* * *

 

While Robin has always been confident that Franky would succeed in fixing their engine problems, she was glad to finally be moving again. After their captive had informed Franky exactly what she'd done to disable the engine it hadn't taken long at all for him to fix everything.

The atmosphere on the ship was already greatly improved. The movement of the ship had raised everyone's spirit, and the moment they'd lost sight of the other ship the tension seemed to have been raised.

Sanji-san was smoking at the bow and he looked like his shoulders were suddenly much lighter. Looked like being stuck in the middle of the ocean with limited food supplies had weighed him down more than the rest of them.

"Good afternoon", Robin said as she approached him.

"Robin-chan! How delightful to see you, may I just say you look as radiant as ever!" Robin waved away the little pink hearts that were flying her way.

"Thank you", she said. "But my radiance is not what I was looking to talk about with you."

"No? But that's such a great topic of conversation, we could spend hours going over all the way in which you're absolutely amazing", the cook said, pressing one hand to his chest dramatically.

"While I imagine that might be true", Robin agreed with a small smile. "I've actually been meaning to talk to you regarding the encounter we had in the library when the captain was possessed by the entity."

"Oh", Sanji said, his expression falling immediately. He shook some ash from his cigarettes over the railing, and looked out at sea. "What about that?"

"I just… wanted to remind you that the things that it said about you while in captain-san's body weren't true", Robin ventured delicately. She'd been trying to figure out how to phrase this for a while, but she wasn't quite happy with it, regardless.

"Well, I know that, it was just saying mean things to manipulate me. I don't care if some bitter 200 year old doesn't think All Blue exists. I've had plenty of people tell me that."

"Of course. It's just… it was in your head before it said those things to you. So it probably picked things that it thought would resonate with you the most", Robin said. "I don't think it would've said the things about finding one dream more important than the other if it hadn't thought that would affect you."

Sanji took another drag from his cigarette and looked out at sea for a while before answering. "Well, it's not that I think my dream isn't important. I know Luffy would beat me up for just thinking that, and I do believe everyone's dreams on the crew are equally important… it's just…", he hesitated.

"I don't doubt that All Blue exists. Anyone can say what they want about it, but that's not going to stop me from believing in it. But what I'm less certain about is… will I find it?"

"What do you mean? If you're sure that it exists…"

"Well, it existing somewhere and me finding it are two separate things, you know?", he explained. "I don't really have any clues as to where it might be, and could just happen that I pass right by it, never knowing, or it's so small that we never even get close to it. Sometimes I think I could spend my entire life looking for it and never be successful… I know I'm not supposed to think like that, but…"

"I know that feeling", Robin chimed in. He turned to look on her in surprise. "I know that the Rio Poneglyph exists, and I have confidence that we will reach Raftel, but there are moments…" she swallowed before continuing. "Sometimes I'm scared I might not be able to read it after all."

"But Robin-chan, of course you'll be able to read it, you're a genius and you've devoted your life to learning how to read the poneglyphs, you've been able to decipher all of them…"

She held a hand up to stop cook-san's protests. "I know that, usually. But what if it's written in some strange ancient dialect that I can't translate? What if it's been damaged between the time of Gold Roger and now? We don't know what the climate on Raftel is like…"

"Nonsense, Robin-chan, you'll…"

"I imagine those feelings are quite similar to your own doubts", she said. "And it's okay to have doubts like that. Not everyone can stay completely confident a hundred percent of the time. But that's what we have nakama for, isn't it? So that when we doubt, they can remind us, by the faith they have in us, of the faith we should have in ourselves." The archeologist smiled at Sanji.

"I am completely convinced that you will find All Blue and I will be among the first lining up to taste all the amazing cuisine you'll undoubtedly produce. And if you ever feel like you won't, just come to me and I'll remind you."

A small blush spread on the cook's face, and the smile spreading on his face was quite endearing.

"And I know that you'll find the Rio Poneglyph and understand everything it has to tell you. And I'm ready to remind you of that at any time of day, Robin-chan", Sanji said, finishing with a little bow.

"Good. So long as that's clear."

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: So this is basically what would happen if one were to ask me to write a filler arc for One Piece. So… Toei? Just hit me up, anytime, I'm available. Come on, this has to be better than the fighting Dugongs at least….
> 
> Well, anyway, thanks so much for reading, I'd really love to hear what you thought of the story!


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